While not directly analogous, people often think "it's just math" or "it's just numbers" and therefore claim their use is ok. I would encourage those people to read about illegal numbers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number

Those numbers are encodings of some specific information. Weights are just results of purely mathematical algorithm fed data in randomized order.

I think you could replace "weights" with other things that you probably would want restricted (eg private keys).

My point is exactly that: just because something is the result of some fixed mathematical process plus randomness does not mean there's no nuance and it's always ok to share/publish.

Can cryptographic keys be copyrightable if they were published?

In come country copyright strictly requires creative human input.

It can be illegal to distribute something even if it's not protected by copyright.

I don't know how courts will rule on this one, though

*some countries

It hasn't been weighed on, but as someone with no legal credentials, it wouldn't surprise me if the ultimate answer on models being copyrightable is "No."

Ultimately, the working parts of a given model are completely unknowable to even the smartest humans once you get to doing anything past bare basics. We know the shape of the model, the number of layers, and what inputs/outputs correlate to, but not really anything else. It's the product of a machine trying things randomly until something works, then the best model produced is selected for production.

Not altogether different on a high level perspective from generating an image, or piece of text using a model. You're introducing a random factor, number of steps, and the machine uses this unknowable model to produce something a person can understand.

I do think the law should update and grant some protections to people who produce models, because losing all protection would mean the death of open model releases, and then we'd be even more seriously staring down the barrel of corpos controlling the entirety of the technology moreso than we are now. At least open models provide some semblance of control for end users.

> I do think the law should update and grant some protections to people who produce models

This is what every reasonable person thinks, and because legislators and lawyers generally aren't that great at or keen on designing new frameworks for IP protection, the most likely outcome would be extending the concept of copyrights to models.

They did it for photography, for software programs, and they will do it for AI models.