Here's the project description from the README:
Have you ever come across some amazing projects that you couldn't use just because you didn't have an OpenAI API key?
We've got you covered! This repository offers reverse-engineered third-party APIs for GPT-4/3.5, sourced from various websites. You can simply download this repository, and use the available modules, which are designed to be used just like OpenAI's official package. Unleash ChatGPT's potential for your projects, now! You are welcome ; ).
You have to run the code to violate the terms of use, which is primarily used to bar you from the service for misusing it.
You are protected in your speech from the government. Commercial law does and will still apply. Arbitrary company decisions happen all the time, and GitHub makes it clear that they won’t refrain from deleting repos for whatever reason.
But idk because i'm not a lawyer and we have copyright and ip laws so clearly congress can pass SOME laws that prohibit speech. Free speech absolutism is weird to me
However, this seems more like an issue of corporate policy than law.
Github needs to have some policy that ends up with them taking down repos that actually host illegal content, they don’t have any legal obligation to host files, so they can respond to takedown notices by just taking down the files. This wouldn’t be the government forcing them to take down files, it would be them deciding not to try and parse the law very closely. But this is different from having an area of law where the constitution doesn’t apply, and it bears repeating, because the constitution is really important and the idea that there should be some sort of cutout where it doesn’t apply is bad for society.
Something we should grapple with as a society is whether poorly written, ambiguous laws should be interpreted as the government taking action by essentially forcing companies into be over zealous in their corporate policy.
You are actually very protected in documenting security flaws, and even republishing them.
I am unsure of who you think enforces laws... as far as I know OpenAI doesn't have their own police force yet.
They can sue you of course, but they generally can't demand compliance with takedowns in this case without first going to a judge and requesting a court order.
There is no "commercial law" unless you mean UCC.. which doesn't apply here.
In theory. In practice we see in the Twitter files, the new rule is that government agencies are free to send takedown requests to social media platforms for speech that disagrees with our (abhorrent) foreign policy.
> GitHub makes it clear that they won’t refrain from deleting repos for whatever reason.
What actions or speech do you think Github has taken that makes that clear?
In general, I have seen Github stick to only taking things down according to the actual DMCA law, more than most companies that take things down pretty much whenever anyone asks them to.
Github has a DMCA Takedown Policy [1], that is better than most companies. Most companies policies -- if they even transparently publish them at all, which they often don't -- go well beyond what the DMCA requires in what they will take down. Compare to eg YouTube [2], which isn't really using a DMCA process at all, doesn't really have a transparent policy at all, and does not allow you to counter-notice. Github's policy is way better than most; but maybe there are occasions where they have been known not to follow their own policy, is that what you're saying?
From what I've seen, github has actually made it much more clear than most companies that they won't just randomly take things down for arbitrary reasons, but have a clear and transparent policy based on the DMCA. But maybe there are things I don't know.
In this particular case, though, someone else pointed out to me in another part of this thread -- it's not totally clear Github is even involved. From the text on the repo, it seems possible that OpenAI contacted the repo owner directly, and the repo owner decided to change the text of the repo README to say that, and that may all that has happened? If Github had actually done a "takedown" according to their usual procedures, I think the repo wouldn't be there anymore? But it's not really clear what's going on, or even what the repo owner _claims_ is going on, unless we have more info than appears in the linked repo README. It's not currently clear that Github is involved at all.
[1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-polic...
[2] https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-yo...
...is the government.
Yeah in all seriousness people trot out perceived constitutional infringements about 500x times more than it actually happens.
It's amazing how the repo phrases this like "having an OpenAI API key" is something that's gatekept, rather than something you get by making a free account. (You may not be able to use it, but the more honest phrasing of "don't want to pay for your own API usage" is apparently too transparent for what this is offering.)
I’m not saying this makes the above repo right, but it is gatekept.
That's a great reason for it to go somewhere.
It seems this gpt4free was basically hijacking 3rd parties services that use GPT-4, bypassing the official OpenAI APIs in order to avoid paying for inference. Of course, that means that the hijacked 3rd parties are the ones footing the bill...
I'm not surprised they have been issued a takedown notice.
What specific US laws do folks think that repo (or running/using the software in that repo) might have been violating? (I agree it seems likely that it's _some_ law, I'm not challenging that just asking if anyone has a legal analysis they want to share).
In theory, they could probably use DCMA to go after anyone using the terms (right or wrong). In practicality, they used it as a tool to go after this particular one because they didn't like what they were doing.
However, this is on Github. Github specifically has a "DMCA Takedown Policy" [1]. I don't believe they have any other policy or procedure involving a "takedown notice". But sure, I could be wrong, or the notice on the repo could be not quite right about what's going on.
Other companies, even big ones, will just take down anything a big corporation asks them to, with no written policy or a written policy basically saying that's what they'll do, while using language implying the DMCA (like "takedown notice"), when that's not what they're doing at all. But Github has actually been pretty good at actually doing this according to the procedure spelled out in DMCA, and not just randomly for whatever another big corporation might want. And being clear about what they're doing why if they're doing something else.
[1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-polic...
I do imagine OpenAI has something in their terms where you're not allowed to use their APIs unless you agree to their terms, which includes payment and not using other accounts than your own (fraud). So maybe that's it?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
A bit like we are footing the bill for openai's training data.
They were referring to the fact that everything ChatGPT is built on is other peoples work. Beyond the actual building of the model details, there is nothing that ChatGPT owns. All the content they use to train, all of the art they use to train. Everything is stolen/used without permission. Obviously there is more to it than that, because you published it on the internet. But that's a different topic.
However, if AI ends up being as mainstream as the average HN user is claiming, are you sure you aren't shooting yourself in the foot to not have your brand and product info not included in that data set if it replaces search engines?
Is it any different from a Google crawler? They put ads on your content on the SERPs after crawling it.
Eh?
> I've never been billed.
Curious how much people's bills are inflated by ai crawlers constantly sucking their data and how much in revenue is lost since traffic is not brought to their websites. And since there's no way to stop this theft, since most of them don't honor robots.txt, people are forced to remove content. Perhaps those charged for bandwidth are losing some dime right now.
Thank you OpenAI for playing a role in me finding an alternative!
GPT4Free is an API reverse engineering and proxy project which exposes an API to use GPT4 by proxy through GPT4 based services like the search engine Phind.
Essentially you are using the reverse engineered services OpenAI credits to access GPT4 instead of using your own OpenAI account.
Just that people keep obnoxiously naming their projects after them for visibility.
Imo this is exactly how this kind of polite takedown should be used. If it highlighted it to you great because at least you know for sure it's not OpenAIs product.
gpt4free means "gpt for free" and also predates GPT-4. I don't think it was meant to be obnoxious or cause confusion.
But it's clear and obvious to me that they saw GPT2 then GPT3 and thought well let's pun on it with GPT4.
First line of the wiki you link
> Generative pre-trained transformers (GPT) are a family of large language models (LLMs),[1][2] which was introduced in 2018 by the American artificial intelligence organization *OpenAI*
Emphasis added.
It's still available on github.
Just because there is a way to obtain a resource doesn't make it yours automatically..
It's more like having a tap with a sign over it saying "free gas", then getting mad when people use it.
For those ootl, here's the previous thread where OP was given a lot of advice from the HN community to change the name https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35608437
GPT4Free is an API reverse engineering and proxy project which exposes an API to use the real GPT4 by proxy through GPT4 based services like the search engine Phind.
To the CrabLang folks,: this is why you care about trademarks. So when someone does this you can protect your project from scammers.
EDIT I might be conflating GPT4all with this… which doesn't make the situation any better and kinda proves my point. This type of scam is confusing and deceptive. And this one seems actively malignant.
https://theholmesfirm.com/takedown-notices-why-trademarks-an...
Yes but often FOSS projects and their developers do not have the money or desire to: enforce any trademark or license, apply for the trademark itself, or market the trademark in any meaningful way.
And is this a DMCA takedown? It's not actually specified in the readme update and I would have thought that the repo would have been hidden by now if it was one. Plus I'm not sure what they'd be claiming copyright on here (the API maybe?)
This is gold and crucial for democratization of AI tools.
But as for your comment, i see it rather as opportunity to make it only with Opt-in by the companies themselves. That way it will actually make it even win-win situation for them for Marketing and Ads (with lower price).
Security researchers put a lot of emphasis on responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities. The maintainers of this project could have easily done the same, but they didn't
Gpt4free uses API vulnerabilities that ultimately proxy to OpenAI's API with someone else's OpenAI credentials so that you don't have to pay for it. That's the whole gimmick.
These API endpoints aren't public service open relays which seems to be what you're trying to claim in your analogy:
The whole point of the project is that they are. It's a compilation of public, free APIs that have been found. Those issues you linked are from people who don't understand that it's expensive to run a free relay for a paid service.
What Exceptions Does DMCA Section 1201 Have To Allow Reverse Engineering?
Section 1201 contains an exception for reverse
engineering, as well as security research, encryption
research, and the distribution of security tools, all of
which may support reverse engineering. However, these
exceptions are drafted very narrowly. If your research
might implicate section 1201, consult a lawyer to see if
you can do your work in a way that is allowed by one of
the relevant exceptions or by an exemption periodically
granted by the Copyright Office. The following factors
are relevant to whether you are entitled to a reverse
engineering, research or security exception. However,
meeting any or all of these factors will not necessarily
protect your work. The list is offered just to give you
an idea of the kinds of things that distinguish
permissible from impermissible reverse engineering:
You lawfully obtained the right to use a computer
program;
You disclosed the information you obtained in a good
faith manner that did not enable or promote
copyright infringement or computer fraud;
Your sole purpose in circumventing is identifying
and analyzing parts of the program needed to achieve
interoperability;
The reverse engineering will reveal information
necessary to achieve interoperability;
Any interoperable program you created as a result of
the reverse engineering is non-infringing;
You have authorization from the owner or operator of
the reverse engineered software or the protected
computer system to do your research;
You are engaged in a legitimate course of study, are
employed, or are appropriately trained or
experienced, in the field of encryption technology.
You provide timely notice of your findings to the
copyright owner.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A...
On the other hand, it contains some traps that can be used to put some limits back in, such as the last lines here: (emphasis mine)
"(15) The unauthorised reproduction, translation, adaptation or transformation of the form of the code in which a copy of a computer program has been made available constitutes an infringement of the exclusive rights of the author. Nevertheless, circumstances may exist when such a reproduction of the code and translation of its form are indispensable to obtain the necessary information to achieve the interoperability of an independently created program with other programs. It has therefore to be considered that, in these limited circumstances only, performance of the acts of reproduction and translation by or on behalf of a person having a right to use a copy of the program is legitimate and compatible with fair practice and must therefore be deemed not to require the authorisation of the rightholder. An objective of this exception is to make it possible to connect all components of a computer system, including those of different manufacturers, so that they can work together. Such an exception to the author's exclusive rights may not be used in a way which prejudices the legitimate interests of the rightholder or which conflicts with a normal exploitation of the program."
Is "work" defined anywhere by law or by precedents? I just genuinely don't know. It seems to me that depending on that, the OpenAI API might be considered "work" just like a copyrighted manuscript. I'd also think there must be some other laws forbidding hacking, but DMCA must have a fast track everywhere.
OpenAI issues DMCA to GitHub, GitHub passes it along to the user, user... has the right to ignore it and leave all of the content up and update the README with a poem?
This was ~2 months ago, and I'm fortunate enough to have a direct contact at OpenAI who I complained to. He came back promptly and told me it was a mistake and the takedown notice was retracted. I also changed the twitter bot's logo to be purple instead of green to avoid future issues.
https://github.com/xtekky/gpt4free/issues/153
ora.sh takedown request #125
We got a takedown request by openai's legal team...
here is a lil poem you can read in the meantime, while I am investigating it:
A little boy sat, in his humble abode.
He tinkered and toyed with devtools galore,
And found himself curious, eager for more.
He copy-pasted requests, with glee and delight,
A personal project, to last him the night.
For educational purposes, and fun it was too,
This little boy's journey had just begun anew.
Now far away, in a tower so grand,
A big company stood, ruling the land.
Their software was mighty, their power supreme,
But they never expected this boy and his dream.
As he played with their code, they started to fret,
"What if he breaks it? What if we're upset?"
They panicked and worried, their faces turned red,
As visions of chaos danced in their head.
The CEO paced in his office so wide,
His minions all scurrying to hide.
"Who is this child?" he cried out in fear,
"Who dares to disrupt our digital sphere?"
The developers gathered, their keyboards ablaze,
To analyze the boy's mischievous ways.
They studied his project, they pored through his code,
And soon they discovered his humble abode.
"We must stop him!" they cried with a shiver,
"This little boy's making our company quiver!"
So they plotted and schemed to halt his advance,
To put an end to his digital dance.
( I did not write it )
discord: https://discord.com/gpt4freeTo clone from this:
wget https://web.archive.org/web/20230428163410embed_/https://litter.catbox.moe/gc4o73.bundle
git clone gc4o73.bundle gpt4freeAnd developers can use their time much more productively to improve one of the many open source alternativez