How likely is it that this becomes a legal problem rendering models unable to be published? Note that using models privately (even within a firm) will always be an option, as copyright only applies to distribution of the work.
I think it’s pretty likely that the distribution of models trained on unlicensed copyrighted works that are capable of regurgitating close matches for those works is already a copyright violation. If the fair use defense relies on the combination of the model and how you use it being sufficiently transformative, that doesn’t mean that the model itself qualifies.
How likely is it that this becomes a legal problem rendering models unable to be published? Note that using models privately (even within a firm) will always be an option, as copyright only applies to distribution of the work.
I think it’s pretty likely that the distribution of models trained on unlicensed copyrighted works that are capable of regurgitating close matches for those works is already a copyright violation. If the fair use defense relies on the combination of the model and how you use it being sufficiently transformative, that doesn’t mean that the model itself qualifies.