AI lab TL;DR | Nuno Sousa e Silva - Are AI Models’ Weights Protected Databases?

AI lab by information labs

🔍 In this TL;DR episode, Assistant Professor Nuno Sousa e Silva (Universidade Católica Portuguesa) discusses his recent Kluwer Copyright Blog contribution, “Are AI Models’ Weights Protected Databases?”, with the AI lab.

📌 TL;DR Highlights

⏲️[00:00] Intro

⏲️[01:41] Q1 - What are weights in an AI model?

⏲️[05:14] Q2 - Why could the EU Database Directive apply to AI models in certain cases, and what would the consequences be?

⏲️[09:23] Wrap-up & Outro

🗣️ Models are basically tools that humans use to simplify the real world, to boil it down, to describe it, and the way that this is done is through mathematical functions.

🗣️ Weights are nothing but a set of numerical values that represent the strength of the connection of neurons in a neural network.

🗣️ [The Database Directive’s] aim is to protect the investment in the creation, presentation, and verification of data, so basically data products and the producer of data products. Admittedly, this had no AI models in mind.

🗣️ We know how much money and effort is put into developing [an AI] model and that the model is really the weights.

🗣️ For EU-based companies that qualify, that means that they have a right to control the reuse or extraction of a substantial part of that database, in other words (...): a right to control the use of the model beyond contractual rules.

🗣️ Some people say that if we want to talk about open source in AI, it needs to be both the disclosure of the training set and the model weights.

📌 About Our Guest

🎙️ Nuno Sousa e Silva | Lawyer (Partner @ PTCS) & Law Professor (Universidade Católica Portuguesa)

🌐 Kluwer Copyright Blog - Are AI Models’ Weights Protected Databases?

https://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2024/01/18/are-ai-models-weights-protected-databases/

🌐 EU Database Directive (96/9/EC)

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A31996L0009

🌐 Nuno Sousa e Silva

https://www.nss.pt/en/#about

Nuno Sousa e Silva is a Lawyer (Partner at PTCS) and a Law Professor. He graduated from the Law School of the Catholic University of Portugal (Porto) and obtained a Master of Laws and a PhD from the same University and holds an LLM degree in Intellectual Property and Competition Law (MIPLC). Nuno acts frequently as an arbitrator, advisor, and legal expert for companies, governments, and international institutions. He published four books and over fifty articles on Intellectual Property, IT Law, EU Law, and Private Law. He has taught and given lectures in Portugal, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and the UK.