Copyright Violations and Large Language Models

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6 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Language models may memorize more than just facts, including entire chunks of texts seen during training. Fair use exemptions to copyright laws typically allow for limited use of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder, but typically for extraction of information from copyrighted materials, rather than verbatim reproduction. This work explores the issue of copyright violations and large language models through the lens of verbatim memorization, focusing on possible redistribution of copyrighted text. We present experiments with a range of language models over a collection of popular books and coding problems, providing a conservative characterization of the extent to which language models can redistribute these materials. Overall, this research highlights the need for further examination and the potential impact on future developments in natural language processing to ensure adherence to copyright regulations. Code is at https://github.com/coastalcph/CopyrightLLMs.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
PublisherAssociation for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
Publication date2023
Pages7403-7412
ISBN (Print)979-8-89176-060-8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Event2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing - Singapore
Duration: 6 Dec 202310 Dec 2023

Conference

Conference2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
CitySingapore
Period06/12/202310/12/2023

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