Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
federalregister.gov
Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
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Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
#2The human authorship requirement still stands:
> 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. [0]
Even with that, applicants now must disclose the inclusion of AI generated content and highlight which parts are human authored vs AI generated:
> Consistent with the Office's policies described above, applicants have a duty to disclose the inclusion of AI-generated content in a work submitted for registration and to provide a brief explanation of the human author's contributions to the work. [1]
Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
#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 understanding of the generative AI technologies currently available, users do not exercise ultimate creative control over how such systems interpret prompts and generate material. Instead, these prompts function more like instructions to a commissioned artist—they identify what the prompter wishes to have depicted, but the machine determines how those instructions are implemented in its output.
> For example, if a user instructs a text-generating technology to “write a poem about copyright law in the style of William Shakespeare,” she can expect the system to generate text that is recognizable as a poem, mentions copyright, and resembles Shakespeare's style.
> But the technology will decide the rhyming pattern, the words in each line, and the structure of the text.
> When an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship.
> As a result, that material is not protected by copyright and must be disclaimed in a registration application.
This is the crux of the argument for me.
Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
#4Seems like a win for artists who oppose generative AI. Now those who use AI to claim a copyright are "put on notice" to clearly disclaim the AI generated portions of their content.
It will be interesting to see if Prompts themselves could be copyrighted, since presumably humans came up with the prompts.
Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
#5The human authorship requirement still stands: > 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. [0] Even with that, applicants now must disclose the inclusion of AI generated content and highlight which parts are human authored vs AI generated: > Consistent with the Office's policies described above, applicants have a dut…
If an author chooses not to credit an AI, how are they going to know?
It's already not completely obvious with the current state of the art in at least some domains.
What happens when the tech moves from "Not completely obvious" to "Impossible to tell?"
Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
#6It's great that USCO is ending speculation with an official stance. Their rationale seems perfectly reasonable, and in step with the court rulings that they cited.
Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
#7>For example, if a user instructs a text-generating technology to “write a poem about copyright law in the style of William Shakespeare,” she can expect the system to generate text that is recognizable as a poem, mentions copyright, and resembles Shakespeare's style. [...] But the technology will decide the rhyming pattern, the words in each line, and the structure of the text.
Neat example and convincing reasoning.
Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
#8This is all very sane and consistent with previous opinions on the matter.
But it doesn’t answer any tough questions either, like: if an AI model outputs something very close to a training input, does the result infringe on the copyrights of the input work?
Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
#9The human authorship requirement still stands: > 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. [0] Even with that, applicants now must disclose the inclusion of AI generated content and highlight which parts are human authored vs AI generated: > Consistent with the Office's policies described above, applicants have a dut…
If an author chooses not to credit an AI, how are they going to know? It's already not completely obvious with the current state of the art in at least some domains. What happens when the tech moves from "Not completely obvious" to "Impossible to tell?"
Right… I hope this isn’t a situation where everyone has to be dishonest in order to compete at the highest level. Major League Baseball and cycling from the early 00s come to mind. I wonder if having correct rules that are unenforceable do more harm than good.
Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI
#10Seems like a win for artists who oppose generative AI. Now those who use AI to claim a copyright are "put on notice" to clearly disclaim the AI generated portions of their content. It will be interesting to see if Prompts themselves could be copyrighted, since presumably humans came up with the prompts.
Recipes are usually not copyrightable as they are just a list of ingredients and instructions with no room for expression. I wonder if the same argument could be applied to prompts.