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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

#151

Post by colordrops »

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…

You are right but there are a lot of curmudgeons that want you to get of their lawn with your AI. Really this whole situation is more of an indictment of copyright rather than of AI.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

saelthavron wrote: post #130
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…

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by wqaatwt »

amiga386 wrote: post #84
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…

All he had to do, if what he wanted was a copyright, is to have pressed the button. He was right there and able to do it. And then his photos would have been like the millions of other photos of monkeys taken by humans, undistinguished, and we could just ignore them and nobody would know or care who he is. But no, he wanted a "monkey selfie", in other words he insisted he not be the author of the work, that he not be…

> is to have pressed the button

I don’t think the act of pressing the button is what determines copyright. Presumably that person would have been able to get the copyright to the image had he actually argued that he was the author (which he was).

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

#154

Post by oytis »

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 or wrote the code that allowed the computer to generate the image on its own, then the human is the author.

The human would be the author of the prompt, but not the image IMO. The image was created not (only) by the author of the prompt, but also the numerous authors of the images consumed by the model and the authors of the model itself.

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

#155

Post by GrinningFool »

ssalka wrote: post #49

I think the headline is overly broad, especially considering: > As a matter of statutory law, the Copyright Act requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being. Dr. Thaler’s copyright registration application listed the Creativity Machine as the work’s sole author, even though the Creativity Machine is not a human being. As a result, the Copyright Office appropriately denied Dr. Thaler’s appli…

If I write a program to generate text of random words, that output can't be copyrighted -- but the program itself is.

By the same token, the prompt is copyrighted - but not the output it generates.

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

#156

Post by kube-system »

The title here is very misleading. They didn't say that if you use AI generation, you cannot claim copyright. They basically said "if you claim not to have made something, then you don't get copyright". That is a pretty obvious and sane conclusion.

If you are stupid enough to go to a court and say "I didn't make this painting, the paintbrush did!", don't be surprised when they roll their eyes and say "well, your paintbrush isn't a human and therefore doesn't qualify".

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

#157

Post by jachee »

visarga wrote: post #126
jachee wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

She’s directing the orchestra. It’s semantically different than prompting.

It’s not like the conductor just says “okay, play Canon in D” and calls it quits. She actively participates in the performance and creation of the end work. And different conductors can absolutely yield different versions of the exact same arrangement. They’re as much a performer as any of the instrumentalists.

So yes, they get royalties like the other performers.

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

#158

Post by kube-system »

anigbrowl wrote: post #60
intrasight wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a legal implication. I'm asking what is it a practical implication. Why would an AI want to copyright their work?

So that you can run an AI company, churn out enough material to flood a particular market, and leverage copyright protection to cash in. Like say you call it the Kittenator, and then do automated keyword search for anything involving kittens - kitten in a box, kitten wearing socks, kittens on the rocks, kitten versus fox - and generate 25 different images for any given keyword combination, and push them out to major…

You don't need an AI assigned copyright to do that. Companies have humans at them too.

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

#159

Post by ahtihn »

kopecs wrote: post #61
bilbo0s wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure this wouldn't pass the merit part unless the prompt was unusually long and precise. the human still made the prompt What I can guarantee, is that series of prompts itself would be copyright-able. (The series of prompts that ultimately created the image.) No matter how little they may weigh any one of those prompts in isolation. That is, assuming the EULA of the LLM doesn't require you to essentially place…

> 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).

Code is purely functional and is copyrightable so why would a prompt not be?

A prompt has essentially the same purpose as code, especially when it's long and precise.

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

#160

Post by ricree »

satvikpendem wrote: post #114
cma wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this scenario correct: If you stick a 360 camera on the outside of someone's car and hit record, and they drive around unaware (but with an earlier agreement that it is ok to mess with their property), you get the copyright. If you stick a 360 camera outside of someone's backpack and hit record and they walk around unaware they get the copyright to the footage as the cameraman. Assume an earlier agreement that pla…

> you get the copyright Do you, in the first scenario? I'm still not sure that you would.

I imagine it would work out roughly the same as if security camera footage was copyrighted, but as far as I can tell there really isn't a clear precedent in the US for this. The monkey selfie case suggests that they probably aren't, but as far as I can tell it's a legal unknown in the US.
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