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US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

reuters.com

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Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

#121

Post by hnthrow90348765 »

torben-friis wrote: post #59
wildzzz wrote: post #21

This is pretty much the exact same case as the monkey that took a photo. The photo is now in the public domain as the monkey cannot be an author of the photo and since the photographer didn't take the photo, neither is he the author. The US Copyright Office clarified that "only works created by a human can be copyrighted under United States law, which excludes photographs and artwork created by animals or by machines…

Assisted work is the big clarifier I think Is a picture edited with photoshop invalid when it uses content fill? What about a picture taken with an iphone, where AI could be part of the phone's processing pipeline or even generate details to make up for lack of optical zoom? Does spell correction invalidate a book? what if there's AI rephrasing features at work? Where's the line? I think as you get into those side qu…

I'd also think the creative input jumping mediums would also be a factor. Text to image is obviously a jump.

Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

#122

Post by autoexec »

bagels wrote: post #115
tantalor wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not difficult to understand. Replace the monkey with a 2nd human, and it's obvious that "the guy" does not earn the copyright, it goes to the person who took the photo. If there was no person, then there is no copyright. The AI thing is no different. If I ask my human friend, "please paint a picture using your vast knowledge and experience", then my friend gets the copyright. Replace friend with AI; there is no…

If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright? If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications?

> If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright?

that depends on the terms of the deal. Some artists want to keep the copyright but will sell the work, while others are happy to sign their rights away for money.

> If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications?

Copyrights are for humans, so if you pay an AI, because the AI isn't a human, it never had a copyright to sell you. You paid for an image without a copyright.

Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

#123

Post by visarga »

tgv wrote: post #35
wildzzz wrote: post #21

This is pretty much the exact same case as the monkey that took a photo. The photo is now in the public domain as the monkey cannot be an author of the photo and since the photographer didn't take the photo, neither is he the author. The US Copyright Office clarified that "only works created by a human can be copyrighted under United States law, which excludes photographs and artwork created by animals or by machines…

> as long as it was a human that told the computer to make the image There is the question of merit. IANAL/IIUC/etc., but I think it's necessary for a work to have merit to be copyrightable. Now, that's a somewhat vague term to me (perhaps it's clearer in a legal framework), but if I prompt "create a picture of a dog", the computer does most of the work. A prompt would have to be pretty concise, up to specifying all…

Maybe the best idea would be just to scrap copyright alltogether. It just blocks people from collaborating and building on top of each other's work. If everyone demanded royalties, where would Linux be? Wikipedia? scientific research? Could we even have this conversation in a forum?

Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

#124

Post by aenvoker »

bagels wrote: post #115
tantalor wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not difficult to understand. Replace the monkey with a 2nd human, and it's obvious that "the guy" does not earn the copyright, it goes to the person who took the photo. If there was no person, then there is no copyright. The AI thing is no different. If I ask my human friend, "please paint a picture using your vast knowledge and experience", then my friend gets the copyright. Replace friend with AI; there is no…

If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright? If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications?

> If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright?

Initially, the someone owns the copyright. Then they agree to give it to you.

> If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications?

No one. It's public domain. As if it was painted by the wind.

Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

#125

Post by autoexec »

wildzzz wrote: post #21

This is pretty much the exact same case as the monkey that took a photo. The photo is now in the public domain as the monkey cannot be an author of the photo and since the photographer didn't take the photo, neither is he the author. The US Copyright Office clarified that "only works created by a human can be copyrighted under United States law, which excludes photographs and artwork created by animals or by machines…

> What's next? Shutting down an AI is murder?

I can see a possible future where AI actually exists and shutting one down could be murder. At that point it would even be a good thing to grant the AI personhood. What passes for "AI" these days doesn't come anywhere close to that, but I wouldn't say it could never happen.

Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

#126

Post by visarga »

jachee wrote: post #75
jedberg wrote: post #33

I'm not sure how this actually matters. Knowing this ruling exists, why would anyone ever claim an AI created their art without human assistance? Even if the AI created the art just from the prompt, the human still made the prompt. Even if the prompt was "make art". I just don't understand how you could ever have AI art without human intervention. Is there a legal definition of "human intervention" that has some mini…

If I prompt you to draw me a bird, I can’t claim copyright on the bird you draw. (At least not with a contract of some sort, of which you are party.)

So.. does the conductor of an orchestra get royalty rights? He's just prompting the "actual" musicians.

Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

#127

Post by [deleted] »

sgc wrote: post #108
kopecs wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I can guarantee, is that the prompt itself would be copyright-able. That's non-obvious to me. Even if the prompt is extremely long and precise, if it is somehow purely functional, it seems possible for it to not be (although in practice, I agree that most prompts could be).

It is basically pseudo-code, and should have the same copyright as other code if it is sufficiently complex to pass the typical test for copyright. One might think code should not have copyright, but that is a different conversation.

[deleted]

Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

#128

Post by JamesLeonis »

bagels wrote: post #115
tantalor wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not difficult to understand. Replace the monkey with a 2nd human, and it's obvious that "the guy" does not earn the copyright, it goes to the person who took the photo. If there was no person, then there is no copyright. The AI thing is no different. If I ask my human friend, "please paint a picture using your vast knowledge and experience", then my friend gets the copyright. Replace friend with AI; there is no…

If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright? If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications?

The artist still owns the copyright. Payment by itself does not transfer copyright. To do that the artist needs to explicitly sign away those rights. This happens in employment all the time. Part of the paperwork you sign is about transferring over the copyrights from yourself to the company.

I highly recommend you check your own paperwork to see exactly how much this covers, since some states allow contracts that cover everything you make at any time. California has a specific law that limits these contracts to only works done on company equipment and on company time. Your state might be different.

Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

#129

Post by visarga »

cvoss wrote: post #37
intrasight wrote: post #23

What, if any, practical implications does this have? Why would a real person or company want to specify a non real person as an author?

The practical implication is you can't copyright something that your AI generated. As the article notes, copyright applications are also being rejected in cases where a human asserts authorship over an AI generated work.

> you can't copyright something that your AI generated

Seems like a loophole, if I generate synthetic data with a model trained on copyrighted works, the synthetic data is copyright free? So I can later train models on it?

Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted

#130

Post by saelthavron »

tantalor wrote: post #92
mikehearn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still can't believe the guy went to Indonesia, went into the monkeys' habitat, gained their trust, set up the camera on a tripod in a way the monkeys would have access to it, adjusted the focus/exposure to capture a facial close-up -- basically engineered the entire situation specifically for that outcome, and simply because he didn't physically hit the shutter he lost credit for the photo. Meanwhile I can open my…

It's not difficult to understand. Replace the monkey with a 2nd human, and it's obvious that "the guy" does not earn the copyright, it goes to the person who took the photo. If there was no person, then there is no copyright. The AI thing is no different. If I ask my human friend, "please paint a picture using your vast knowledge and experience", then my friend gets the copyright. Replace friend with AI; there is no…

> The AI thing is no different. If I ask my human friend, "please paint a picture using your vast knowledge and experience", then my friend gets the copyright. Replace friend with AI; there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright. It doesn't default to me just because I asked for it.

Why should an "AI" be considered a who rather than just another tool? To me, current "AI" are image manipulation program and camera replacements instead of people replacement.

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