Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

Post by testrst4247 » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 2:37 AM UTC

famouswaffles wrote: post #46

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #3

> If a work's traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it. > For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the “traditional elements of authorship” are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user. Based on the Office's un…

Don't overlook the fact that agencies like the USCO are at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of determining stuff like this. They move first because they're on the front lines, as it were, but they can be overruled by the courts and the courts can be overruled by congress. 100% this will be litigated and likely altered in the coming months/years.

Post by smeagull » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 2:40 AM UTC

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #3

> If a work's traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it. > For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the “traditional elements of authorship” are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user. Based on the Office's un…

Post by brookst » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 2:41 AM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #131

brookst wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not advocating copyrightable software, but it seems clear to me that if databases are copyrightable because they represent curation, then software must be too. Any line of code, probably not. But a program as a whole, sure. Otherwise I think you blow up music copyrights too, since a single note isn’t copyrightable and a song is just a bunch of individual notes. At some point, choosing, ordering, and organizing a coll…

I think the open question is whether software is in the realm of patents or of copyrights. It's not unreasonable to suggest the former, since software is kind of like a widget that does stuff, except virtualizing the "widget" part to run on a generic widget of sorts. Copyrights traditionally applied to works that you would consider "artistic" rather than "inventions." What you're suggesting, about a minimal work, is…

Post by hakre » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 2:42 AM UTC

brookst wrote: post #108

randombits0 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful! I’ve always felt that, as written, copyright should not apply to most software. Since only creative expressions may be copyrighted and functional expressions are not copyrightable, it’s very hard to match up the copyrightable portions of software with those that are not. Requiring a declaration of what parts are and are not copyrightable for software would be a major shift in policy and require major changes…

Not advocating copyrightable software, but it seems clear to me that if databases are copyrightable because they represent curation, then software must be too. Any line of code, probably not. But a program as a whole, sure. Otherwise I think you blow up music copyrights too, since a single note isn’t copyrightable and a song is just a bunch of individual notes. At some point, choosing, ordering, and organizing a coll…

Post by greenyoda » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 2:44 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #97

brotchie wrote: post #45

I’m curious. If I’ve spent 8 hours getting the perfect prompt, fine tuning a few LORAs, mixing them, choosing between 8 different checkpointed stable diffusion models, and have done a bunch of in painting, does this constitute a copyrightable work? Certainly a lot of artistic vision and effort to get to the finished “work”.

That is the "sweat of the brow" copyright argument, and it has been rejected in by US courts.