I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding of a license is that it gives me permission to use/distribute something that’s otherwise legally protected. For instance, software code is protected by copyright, and FOSS licenses give me the right to distribute it under some conditions.

However, LLMs are produced by a computer, and aren’t covered by copyright. So I was hoping someone who has better understanding of law to answer some questions for me:

  1. Is there some legal framework that protects AI models, so that I’d need a license to distribute them? How about using them, since many licenses do restrict use as well.

  2. If the answer to the above is no: By mentioning, following and normalizing LLM licenses, are we essentially helping establish the principle that we do need permission from companies to use their models, and that they have the right to restrict us?

  • Dodecahedron DecemberEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago
    1. Nope. AI work can’t even be copywritten.
    2. This is how licenses have always worked. Company makes thing, licenses it. Doesn’t matter really what that thing is.

    But keep in mind there are models and there are weights. Models can be open sourced. Weights generally are not.