Matthew Sag
@matthewsag.bsky.social
1.2K followers 190 following 98 posts
Law professor focusing on Copyright and AI, mostly. Most of my work is available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=461043
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
matthewsag.bsky.social
Why can't you copyright an AI-generated image that looks creative? My latest explores the "Skater Beagle" puzzle - how generative AI creates genuinely new works from latent space, not remix, but still lacks the human authorship copyright requires. matthewsag.com/skater-beagl...
Skater Beagle and the Puzzle of AI Creativity – Matthew Sag
matthewsag.com
matthewsag.bsky.social
This is a guide to drafting law school ai policies.
Reposted by Matthew Sag
ashtonpittman.bsky.social
Photojournalist Bill Biggart died when the second tower collapsed on him on 9/11, but the film he shot that day and his flash card were recovered from the debris and developed, along with his flash card.

You can see his amazing photos of 9/11, the last photos he took while alive, here:
September 11th — Bill Biggart Photographer
www.billbiggart.com
matthewsag.bsky.social
A new NBER working paper by Stella Jia and Abhishek Nagaraj makes some stunning claims about the effects of pirated book corpora on large-language-model (LLM) performance. I have my doubts. matthewsag.com/piracy-proxi... #AI #Copyright #books3
matthewsag.bsky.social
Why is everything about WordPress so ugly and awkward these days?
matthewsag.bsky.social
Invisible disabilities are all around you. www.huffpost.com/entry/dad-bu... "Advocating can be confusing and hard when your disability is invisible. ... People with disabilities, invisible or not, shouldn’t have to explain themselves. Nor should accommodations for them be met at the lowest bar."
A Dad Tried To Bully Me Into Giving My Seat To His Kid. Here's What Happened When I Said No.
“Oh yeah? That’s your seat?” He reeked of beer and a jagged vein bulged from his left temple. “Why are you so special?”
www.huffpost.com
matthewsag.bsky.social
Is the EU really the "rights-based" leader in AI regulation?

In "The Illusory Normativity of Rights-Based AI Regulation," Yiyang Mei and I argue that this widely accepted assumption fundamentally misunderstands how EU AI regulation actually works. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
The Illusory Normativity of Rights-Based AI Regulation
<p>Whether and how to regulate AI is now a central question of governance. Across academic, policy, and international legal circles, the European Union is widel
papers.ssrn.com
matthewsag.bsky.social
This is what @United says after holding you on the tarmac for 2 1/2 hours.
matthewsag.bsky.social
Stuck at O’Hare waiting hours for united to let us off the plane. I’m beginning to question my life choices.
matthewsag.bsky.social
I have all discussions of the president muted, so I had to hunt for this
knibbs.bsky.social
NEW: “You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you've read or studied, you're supposed to pay for,” Trump said. “We appreciate that, but just can't do it— because it's not doable.”

www.wired.com/story/presid...
Trump Says He's 'Getting Rid of Woke' and Dismisses Copyright Concerns in AI Policy Speech
The remarks, which came during a keynote speech at a summit hosted by the All-In Podcast, follow President Donald Trump's newly released AI Action Plan.
www.wired.com
matthewsag.bsky.social
I think everyone on fox news is infringing
matthewsag.bsky.social
Robots can’t be sued for copyright infringement either. But I think we all know that’s not the issue
matthewsag.bsky.social
GenAI has kept me so busy on copyright law issues that I have not done any empirical work for a while. Switching from Stata to python with Claude is a revelation! You still need to do the conceptual work, but its amazing.
matthewsag.bsky.social
Also my BMI just shot up! Guess I better get some Ozempic.
matthewsag.bsky.social
Just checked my after visit summary from my health care provider. Was sad to see that I have lost 12 inches in height. Just as well they use infallible humans and not silly hallucinating AI tools.
matthewsag.bsky.social
Is that the difference between blue sky and X?
matthewsag.bsky.social
It's really impressive how quickly journalists are able to digest a 40 page opinion, talk to half a dozen sources about their reactions and get something in print. No LLM is going to replace @knibbs.bsky.social.
knibbs.bsky.social
MORE huge AI copyright news: A big decision in Kadrey v. Meta, one of the most closely-watched legal battles. The judge sided with Meta, but *very* begrudgingly. www.wired.com/story/meta-s...
Meta Wins Blockbuster AI Copyright Case—but There’s a Catch
A federal judge ruled that Meta did not violate the law when it trained its AI models on 13 authors' books.
www.wired.com
Reposted by Matthew Sag
knibbs.bsky.social
Honestly would love to get these two judges on a podcast together to duke it out
matthewsag.bsky.social
Always nice to be cited followed by "But that can't be right."
quote from judgment: "Meta and its law professor amici, as well as the Matthew Sag article cited above, argue that market dilution does not count under the fourth factor. They argue that harm caused by an LLM’s outputs is only relevant if the outputs are themselves infringing—that is, if the LLM regurgitates copyrighted material (or generates text that is substantially similar to copyrighted material). ... But that can’t be right."
matthewsag.bsky.social
As @bb.usefairuse.com said, the vibe is that books from LibGen are radioactive. But see Kadrey v Meta. So lots more will be said on this.
matthewsag.bsky.social
Good law review note question: Can JK Rowling enjoin the distribution of LLama?
matthewsag.bsky.social
No good evidence on memorization in the Meta case according to the judge, but he was focused on the works of the lead plaintiffs. So they just need JK Rowling as a plaintiff?
matthewsag.bsky.social
It looks like memorization is very model-dependent and book-dependent. In general, it does not happen much (<1%), but it's hard to explain why some LLama models memorize some books quite a lot. (Also even 0.1% of a few million is a lot to some people)