News Google Bard Plagiarized Our Article, Then Apologized When Caught

[Colif]

the fact that the 7950X3D was 12 percent faster at 1080p at sock settings and 9 percent faster when both CPUs were overclocked.

what are sock settings? Yes, its a typo but well, things like this stand out to me. Took me right out of topic of discussion.

it should show references as no way it is doing any of the things its answering.

It seems its trying to make out its an oracle and knows all. If its allowed to continue, future generations will think Google knew it all. And won't look outside the box

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

I am not seeing any clear copyright infringement here. Facts are not subject to copyright protection. Rather, copyright is intended to protect independently created works that have “at least a modicum” of creativity. A single sentence stating a fact is not a "work". So, I would say it is disingenuous to characterize this a plagiarism.

The bigger question is can a machine independently create as to create a copyright eligible work. The guidance from the US Copyright office is far short of clear - "The answer will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work." At the risk of getting this post banned for speaking politics, as a lawyer, let me say we need to decide who will make the decision. If we leave it up to the unelected officials at the US Copyright Office, we may not get the decision we want. Whatever decision the Office makes will be challenged in court, leaving to judges to decide if they got right or wrong. Some judges will say one thing and some another, causing what is caused a split in the courts. This will prompt the US Supreme Court to take a case ultimately deciding the matter. Things would be a lot simpler if Congress legislated. However, I doubt Congress will act when there are more politically charged topics that drive voters to the polls. Basically, who the heck is going to get elected running on a platform of stop Google from getting copyrights?

But that is how things work in US. When new issues arise, and Congress does nothing to address them - like passing legislation saying if Bitcoin is or not security or if machines can create copyrightable works - then it falls to the Executive Office (regulators like the SEC and Copyright Office) and the Courts to decide using outdated laws as a guide.

 

[USAFRet]

I am not seeing any clear copyright infringement here. Facts are not subject to copyright protection. Rather, copyright is intended to protect independently created works that have “at least a modicum” of creativity. A single sentence stating a fact is not a "work". So, I would say it is disingenuous to characterize this a plagiarism.

Copyright and plagiarism are two different things.

One is a legal framework, the other is 'dishonest'.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

what are sock settings? Yes, its a typo but well, things like this stand out to me. Took me right out of topic of discussion.

it should show references as no way it is doing any of the things its answering.

It seems its trying to make out its an oracle and knows all. If its allowed to continue, future generations will think Google knew it all. And won't look outside the box

Idiocracy all over again

 

[DavidLejdar]

As sole creator of Bard, I can only apologize. It is hard as single parent these days - I work hard all day to provide it with the hardware and electricity it needs for living. And what does it do? It just hangs out with some Google gang all day and night.

Seriously though, what the article here talks about, it does sound like plagiarism to me. Even in case of common knowledge, such as that the Sun and the Moon exist, if I claim that humanity knew nothing about them before I discovered them, I wouldn't be making a correct statement, would I?

On the other hand though, i.e. Bard is a tool, and there is the argument that it is up to the user how to use it. Specifically, it may give a wrong answer, but if I then proceed to state that wrong answer (as my own), then that is as much my problem as when I use a hammer to break a window.

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

Copyright and plagiarism are two different things.

One is a legal framework, the other is 'dishonest'.

A core principal of US IP law is facts, laws of nature, etc cannot be protected and are free to all. As such, as a society, we have decided it is not dishonest to repeat facts discovered by another, as was the case here. They're complaint seems to be the use of "we' instead of "Tom's hardware.". That is just bad coding, not dishonest.

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

Claiming you wrote something someone else wrote is the worst thing you can do in the written language, never mind the copyright violation.

That is not what happened. The Chat bot just repeated a sentence from Tom's article without citing a source. That is sloppy, but not plagiarism.

 

[PEnns]

Keep your eye on that horseless carriage thing, too. It's going to wind up killing a lot of people, mark my words.

Using someone else's testing and claiming it's their own is plagiarism.

And furthermore, if you were to take, say, a piece by Shakespeare, move some words around and claim it's yours, it is still stealing. Or to be polite, plagiarism.

 

[Dantte]

That is not what happened. The Chat bot just repeated a sentence from Tom's article without citing a source. That is sloppy, but not plagiarism.

Incorrect, Bard did more than just copy a sentence, it also took it another step and claimed it did the research and work itself and took credit for the labors of Tom's Hardware; this is 100% plagiarism! "Sloppy" would be taking a sentence and not citing its reference; Bard, again as I stated in the previous sentence, went a step further.

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

Incorrect, Bard did more than just copy a sentence, it also claimed it did the research and work itself and took credit for the labors of Tom's Hardware; this is 100% plagiarism! "Sloppy" would be taking a sentence (not claiming it as its own), and not citing its reference.

No that is not what happened. According to the article, "In fact, Bard's sentence is a rewording of a specific sentence in our original article. "

Bard took information and attempted to answer the question: "which cpu is faster the Intel Core i9-13900K or AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3d?". It answered the question by finding the information and presenting it to the user.

Bard never claimed to do the work. You are reading way too much into "In our testing, the 7950X3d was 12% faster than the 13900K at 1080p gaming at stock settings, and 9% faster when the chips were overclocked." If the prepositional phrase "in our testing" was dropped, you would have no problem with the answer. Nor could you, because repeating facts is not plagiarism.

The question becomes, does the computer understand the prepositional phrase, and if it does, could it form the intent necessary to steal. We have no evidence to answer either in the affirmative. As such, keeping with established practice of the plaintiff has to prove their case before the burden shifts to the defendant to defend themselves - a cornerstone of US law - you cannot sustain you claim.

With all due respect, you are giving way too much credit to a machine and Mr. Piltch is being way to sensitive.

 

[jeremyj_83]

To correct the article, if they reworded your results, then it wasn't plagiarism. You can't copyright facts and data -- only a specific expression of them.

This is 100% plagiarism. When you are writing a research paper, it doesn't matter if you paraphrase, "to state something written or spoken in different words, especially in a shorter and simpler form to make the meaning clearer," the information from a source you still need to CITE the source. If you don't cite where you got information it is plagiarism. In a college what Bard did could be grounds for expulsion due to academic dishonesty. At the very least what Bard did would result in a 0 on your research paper.

 

[jeremyj_83]

That is not what happened. The Chat bot just repeated a sentence from Tom's article without citing a source. That is sloppy, but not plagiarism.

What Bard did is the definition of Accidential Plagiarism.

 

[Endymio]

Copyright and plagiarism are two different things.

One is a legal framework, the other is 'dishonest'.

The only dishonesty here is the person who claims they actually believed Google's Chatbot was running its own hardware benchmarks, rather than searching the web for them.

 

[Endymio]

i mean this statement is not wrong
Motor vehicle fatality rate in U.S. by year - Wikipedia

I would have that my point was obvious. All technological advances come with negatives. Motor vehicles have killed millions, yet I don't see anyone advocating we return to the horse and buggy days. I sincerely doubt AI will cause as many deaths as the internal combustion engine, but its positive benefits will almost certainly be even larger than the societal transformation the automobile enabled.

 

[Endymio]

What Bard did is the definition of Accidential Plagiarism.

Not quite. Academic plagiarism can only occur in an academic setting; where the expectation is that the entire content of a scholarly work is original content by the work's author, unless formally stated otherwise. But if one asks Google Bard for the temperature in Nome, Alaska, no one seriously believes the chatbot ran out and checked a thermometer there.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Not quite. Academic plagiarism can only occur in an academic setting; where the expectation is that the entire content of a scholarly work is original content by the work's author, unless formally stated otherwise. But if one asks Google Bard for the temperature in Nome, Alaska, no one seriously believes the chatbot ran out and checked a thermometer there.

False equivalence in your example.

 

[Endymio]

False equivalence in your example.

At your doctor's office, the nurse advises you to get the flu vaccine, stating that it reduces your chances of severe illness by 50%. She doesn't cite her source for that figure. Do you believe she personally ran the field studies for that statistic?

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

ng

This is 100% plagiarism. When you are writing a research paper, it doesn't matter if you paraphrase, "to state something written or spoken in different words, especially in a shorter and simpler form to make the meaning clearer," the information from a source you still need to CITE the source. If you don't cite where you got information it is plagiarism. In a college what Bard did could be grounds for expulsion due to academic dishonesty. At the very least what Bard did would result in a 0 on your research paper.

There is a huge difference between the fantasy land of college and real world, and real-world laws. "That there can be no valid copyright in facts is universally understood. The most fundamental axiom of copyright law is that no author may copyright his ideas or the facts he narrates." Feist Publications, Inc, v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 US 340, 344-345 (1991). Likewise, "the Court has written that "a new mineral discovered in the earth or a new plant found in the wild is not patentable subject matter. Likewise, Einstein could not patent his celebrated law that E=mc2; nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity. Such discoveries are `manifestations of ... nature, free to all men and reserved exclusively to none.'" Mayo Collaborative v. Prometheus Labs., 566 U.S. 66 (2012). As the foregoing statements of law from the US Supreme Court make clear, what may make your professor mad is of no legal consequence in the real world.

 

[jeremyj_83]

ng

There is a huge difference between the fantasy land of college and real world, and real-world laws. "That there can be no valid copyright in facts is universally understood. The most fundamental axiom of copyright law is that no author may copyright his ideas or the facts he narrates." Feist Publications, Inc, v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 US 340, 344-345 (1991). Likewise, "the Court has written that "a new mineral discovered in the earth or a new plant found in the wild is not patentable subject matter. Likewise, Einstein could not patent his celebrated law that E=mc2; nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity. Such discoveries are `manifestations of ... nature, free to all men and reserved exclusively to none.'" Mayo Collaborative v. Prometheus Labs., 566 U.S. 66 (2012). As the foregoing statements of law from the US Supreme Court make clear, what may make your professor mad is of no legal consequence in the real world.

We are not talking about copyrights or patents and therefore they have no relevance in this discussion. We are talking about plagiarism which is completely different. Plagiarism is something where you do not have laws but instead ethics. Lets discard the academic and look at real world. If a journalist were to plagiarize a story that journalist could easily be fired even though there aren't any laws against plagiarism.

 

[Endymio]

Lets discard the academic and look at real world. If a journalist were to plagiarize a story that journalist could easily be fired even though there aren't any laws against plagiarism.

Oops! Have you ever read a tech site? 98% of their stories are simply reworded content picked up from other sites, rarely with any attribution.

 

[jeremyj_83]

At your doctor's office, the nurse advises you to get the flu vaccine, stating that it reduces your chances of severe illness by 50%. She doesn't cite her source for that figure. Do you believe she personally ran the field studies for that statistic?

Again false equivalence.

The issue with Bard and why it is plagiarism is due to how it was written and lack of citation. Bard tried to pass this off as its own work when it was QUICKLY verifiable that the work was someone else's. Had Bard cited the work from Tomshardware then it isn't plagiarism.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Oops! Have you ever read a tech site? 98% of their stories are simply reworded content picked up from other sites, rarely with any attribution.

I have read MANY tech sites for more than 25 years. Sounds like the sites that you are referring to have little to no journalistic integrity or is run by a single person. Every site I have read will cite where they get things if it isn't their own work.

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

Lets discard the academic and look at real world. If a journalist were to plagiarize a story that journalist could easily be fired even though there aren't any laws against plagiarism.

With all due respect, I cited real world law. If you don't like the law, I am sorry.

As for the journalist, if a journalist were to get fired for forgetting to cite a source, that would be tragic. But wait, what if it were a confidential source. She couldn't cite the source without putting them in danger. Then should be fired?

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

Again false equivalence.

The issue with Bard and why it is plagiarism is due to how it was written and lack of citation. Bard tried to pass this off as its own work when it was QUICKLY verifiable that the work was someone else's. Had Bard cited the work from Tomshardware then it isn't plagiarism.

You are accusing Bard of a certain mens rea but you have not established it is capable of such guilty knowledge or even forming intent. It is a machine, not a human. Would you have me file a complaint against Bowser in Super Marios Bros for throwing fireballs at you?

 

[jeremyj_83]

With all due respect, I cited real world law. If you don't like the law, I am sorry.

As for the journalist, if a journalist were to get fired for forgetting to cite a source, that would be tragic. But wait, what if it were a confidential source. She couldn't cite the source without putting them in danger. Then should be fired?

There is no real world law for plagiarism and trying to use law that is irrelevant to the topic is basically a deflection tactic.

If you theoretical the journalist would write that the source is confidential or would let their boss know if questioned. In fact this is seen all the time in journalism. My example was along the lines of an investigative piece where they have to do research and the sources are not confidential.