Training a GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) on other people’s text is not intellectual property theft because the GPT does not reproduce the original text verbatim. Instead, it learns to generate new text based on patterns and relationships within the training data. Furthermore, the text used to train GPT models is typically publicly available, which means it is not subject to copyright protection.

One of the key features of GPT models is their ability to generate new text that is coherent and stylistically consistent with the training data. This is achieved by using unsupervised learning techniques, where the model is trained on large amounts of text data without explicit guidance or supervision. During training, the model learns to identify patterns and relationships within the text data, which it can then use to generate new text that is similar in style and content to the training data.

However, the generated text is not a direct copy of the original text, nor does it contain any specific information from the original text. Instead, the model learns to capture the underlying structure and patterns of the text data, which it then uses to generate new text. This means that the GPT does not reproduce the original text in a way that would infringe on the author’s copyright.

Furthermore, the text used to train GPT models is typically publicly available, such as books, articles, and websites. This means that the text is not subject to copyright protection because it is in the public domain. As such, there is no legal basis for claiming that training a GPT on this text constitutes intellectual property theft.

It is worth noting, however, that there are some potential ethical concerns around using text data without proper attribution or consent. For example, if the text data contains sensitive or personal information, or if it was created by a marginalized group, then using this data without proper consideration for the rights and perspectives of the original authors could be considered unethical.

In conclusion, training a GPT on other people’s text is not intellectual property theft because the GPT does not reproduce the original text verbatim and the text used to train the model is typically publicly available. However, there are still ethical considerations around the use of text data, and it is important to be mindful of these issues when using text data for training GPT models or other machine learning applications.