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Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

federalregister.gov

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Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#361

Post by thayne »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #182
techdragon wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but that assumes people are honest about the providence of their content and let you know up front that it was produced by an Ai and is thus not protected by copyright… and given the preponderance of copyright info in website footers, I expect this will be an error of omission rather than actively claiming incorrectly. By simply not giving individual articles a more specific copyright note mentioning the AI all…

People might not be honest. But large organizations, oh boy. There's zero way Disney will want any chance for their materials to not be copyrightable. If the Copyright office's view on this stands, there will be no great disruption of the employability of creatives.

On the other hand, you can bet big companies like Disney will lobby hard for copyright to extend to AI generated works. And it wouldn't be the first time Disney has influenced copyright law.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#362

Post by vanattab »

Hmm. I am not so sure about this. What about the fact that to produce a image I like with dalle our similar I need to often run many many different descriptions to get what I want and some times use the edit feature. If a generate an image and use the built in photoshop like erase feature and regerate something else to fill the space is it copywriteable. What about if photoshop has or implements (probably already exits) auto insertion of images and people. Say you just paste something onto your image and photoshop runs ai algorithm that helps blen it in. What about traditional painters that relay on randomness in thier work? Like guys who just spin a canvas get blindfold and just throw paint around?

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#363

Post by daniel_reetz »

yafbum wrote: post #50
famouswaffles wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm still hoping it stays that way. That'd be a fantastic direction for works in the public domain.

Agree, it's fascinating to think we could just generate a whole new public domain.

Also, it's fascinating to think humans might be kept in the creative loop only to establish copyright status. Legal enablers.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#364

Post by bearmode »

hermannj314 wrote: post #335
bearmode wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating AI artwork is simply telling the computer the result you want, and picking what you believe to be the best output. There may be something of an iterative process there, but it's really not creative. Also the photographer is not "guided by a tool". The camera doesn't guide them.

Can you elaborate on what makes something creative or not? On the 2nd point, the camera guides photographer. Watch anyone take a selfie, they use the camera to decide what to do with the camera. It is iterative.

Sure. It's like having a friend who can draw. You detail to them something you're picturing in your mind, and they make it into something actually real.

Who would have ownership over that art piece? Who actually did the work to make it exist?

Copyright doesn't protect ideas, it protects the specific creative expression of those ideas. By creating a prompt you're creating an idea, but that isn't a copyrightable, creative action. You're just the 'ideas guy' for a robot artist.

And again on the 2nd point, the camera doesn't guide the photographer. It can help them dial in their vision, but they're in full creative control at all times. It guides you no more than a hammer guides you to the nail.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#365

Post by kube-system »

lucubratory wrote: post #306
kube-system wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the answer they want to say is, “it probably does”, but they don’t want to say it and cause a big disruption to commerce until the courts intervene.

There is precedent in Authors' Guild vs Google and Perfect 10 vs Google that it doesn't, this isn't the first time things like this have come before the courts. There are also laws to consider. I know this is US law and the US doesn't have those laws, but copyright harmonisation is a thing and the EU, UK, Japan etc all have laws very explicitly stating that TDM is an exemption to copyright - some bodies would presuma…

> There is precedent in Authors' Guild vs Google and Perfect 10 vs Google that it doesn't

Fair use is entirely dependent on the specific use. While those decisions may protect (for instance) OpenAI, they’re not helpful in determining if anyone can use the outputs from such a model.

Yes Google can index an image and serve it in search results. But I cannot copy a copyrighted image from Google and publish it in my book.

Questions like “is the output that ChatGPT just gave me encumbered by copyright?” are still extremely difficult to answer.

I agree that we’re losing our technological edge. This is why I wish we had better answers for these questions. If we want to lead with the rule of law, then the rule of law needs to be able to lead.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#366

Post by lukko »

vanattab wrote: post #362

Hmm. I am not so sure about this. What about the fact that to produce a image I like with dalle our similar I need to often run many many different descriptions to get what I want and some times use the edit feature. If a generate an image and use the built in photoshop like erase feature and regerate something else to fill the space is it copywriteable. What about if photoshop has or implements (probably already exi…

Then with DALL-E it is like you are instructing a commissioned artist (who would own the copyright). I think it's fundamentally different to using a tool in Photoshop - content aware fill uses the rest of the image to fill in space, so whoever owned the original image would own the content-aware fill section. If an AI is used to generate new features - images, people - then it is like a collage or original and copyrighted work. Artists that throw paint around made the artistic and creative decision to do that, would choose the paint, the canvas etc. and actually it is very difficult to create work that has that quality of spontaneity and randomness - they would definitely own the copyright.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#367

Post by Riverheart »

HPsquared wrote: post #351
Riverheart wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just go ahead and say Readymades aren't art and express my belief that the artistic community will survive the copyright loss of loosely arranged furniture so we can avoid justifying the current state of affairs with avante garde silliness. John Cage made a musical piece 4'33 which is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence which has as much to do with music as Readymades do with art. His other works include curated…

You mean to say he's a con artist?

I give the benefit of the doubt that Marchel Duchamp and others genuinely believed in the artistic merit of their works and their enthusiasm made it easier to persuade people to agree with their viewpoints. The brief history of these artforms suggests that in the absence of their champions they don't resonate with artists but are still talked about because they stoke conversation about the nature of art. Maybe that was their original intent. I don't think these endeavors were profitable enough to suggest dishonesty over passion but if someone tries to sell you a moose head mounted over a toilet for 500k because it's "art" you may want to question their motives.

Good art typically stands on it's own and connects with people without the need to explain why it's significant. Salvador Dali's work is visually interesting even if you have no clue what any of it means. If I see a bunch of objects scattered around a room it looks like clutter. If I see a bunch of paint splattered to a canvas if looks like a mess. If someone has to explain why these things are "art" is it the art that's compelling or their argument? The exception to that would be optical illusions.

Art is somewhat subjective so someone will always argue their own preference but if anything is art because "it's all subjective" then nothing is art. Buttering my toast in the morning could be art because I spread it using a spoon instead of a knife and that is an expression of rebellion against societal norms. Did I sell you on my art or my argument and is the latter what we want?

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#368

Post by sethrin »

pmoriarty wrote: post #216
Riverheart wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just go ahead and say Readymades aren't art and express my belief that the artistic community will survive the copyright loss of loosely arranged furniture so we can avoid justifying the current state of affairs with avante garde silliness. John Cage made a musical piece 4'33 which is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence which has as much to do with music as Readymades do with art. His other works include curated…

I've yet to find a better definition of art than that of Andy Warhol, who said "art is what you can get away with." Considering that both Duchamp and Cage got away with convincing the world that their work is art, it is.

To the degree that I've been able to verify, Warhol borrowed that one from Marshall McLuhan.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#369

Post by VLM »

gambiting wrote: post #283
dragonwriter wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah but that assumes people are honest about the providence of their content and let you know up front that it was produced by an Ai and is thus not protected by copyright… Detection systems for generative AI are being developed (potentially helped by generative AI systems being built with wwatermarking capabilities that are designed to be unobtrusive to humans, but detectable with tools.) Research on this (and ex…

I honestly think this is a fools game - maybe it will work in those very very early stages of generative AI we're in now, but there's no way this can work reliably going forward. If anything, I imagine it will soon start yielding false positives against human generated work too.

Probably not. This is gross simplification of how counterfeit photocopied money is detected, but human visual acuity for yellow dots on white paper is pretty weak compared to red dots, so color photocopiers and color printers have/had firmware that would seed money with extraneous yellow dots. Computer vision has no such visual distortion and as such computers see counterfeit money as covered in yellow dots.

In a way its simpler with AI. AI is the ultimate groupthink tool and record keeping is simple. Simply ask the AI if this is the only possible output that could have been generated that's consistent as of March 17 2023 based on political limitations and censorship rules and artistic fads trends memes and styles of that era. The smaller the AI contribution (perhaps an icon bitmap) the (edited: easier) harder it is to hide AI involvement and the smaller the damage caused by AI to the copyright status of the work. The larger the AI contribution the easier it is to detect, but the larger the damage AI is causing, so it balances out.

As a concrete example, today, ask an AI "Please write a Harry Potter book" you will get a story that's extensively filtered and censored and bowdlerized to March 2023 political / cultural standards (hmm who's standards, the book buying public or some other group? Most people do not like our current censors... but they are in total power right now...), it would NOT look like a 1997 book at all, books from that long ago are only suitable for public book burnings now. In theory it should be possible for an incredibly politically incorrect AI to be permitted in 2033 solely for lawsuit discovery purposes to "Please write a Harry Potter book adhering to what we now call the hate filled politics of March 2023", then compare the md5sums, they match. Done, AI detected.

There's not many AIs and there's not many people permitted to grind their axes by censoring those AIs, so its a pretty small solution set.

There's an interesting political aspect to banning copyright of AI production, anything turbo-woke can be assumed to be AI generated and as such uncopyrightable, so the only way to make money in the 2030's will be to sell remakes and sequels of "Birth of a Nation" and "Mein Kampf" because an AI would never be permitted uncensored expression, so those cannot be AI produced and must have been made by humans, and as such only "right wing" content can be copyrighted and sold for huge profit.

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