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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

#191

Post by SilasX »

mikehearn wrote: post #43
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…

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 always felt to me like the photographer was trying to have it both ways there:

"Whoa! Isn't this sooo trippy! A monkey showing self-awareness to take a picture of itself!"

Courts: "Okay, the monkey took it, so no copyright for you."

"No, you don't get it! I put in a ton of work to stage that to the point that the monkey just had to be in the right place at the right time. Hell, a worm could have triggered it!"

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

#192

Post by Lerc »

kerblang wrote: post #44

I think there needs to be legal delineation between "I wrote a program that helps me create artwork" vs. "I wrote a program that scrapes the internet so I can plagiarize other people's artwork" i.e. AI.

Your comment represents a common oversight that people seem to have in this debate.

Training a model on data is a different thing to scraping data. Generating output from a model is a different thing to training a model.

Each aspect of these things can and should be evaluated individually, furthermore, each relationship between them should be evaluated individually.

Make an argument for what things are good or bad and then make an argument for how the relationships between them influence each aspect.

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

#194

Post by acchow »

quadragenarian wrote: post #31
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…

Wait just so i understand it, if a single human creates an AI model and trains it, and then prompts it to create an image, is that considered "human intervention" and does that make that human the author of that image? What if its a group of 5 humans that built the LLM and one of them prompts it? Isn't all AI built by some of group of humans? When is AI treated like its own entity like a monkey versus a tool made by…

> Wait just so i understand it, if a single human creates an AI model and trains it, and then prompts it to create an image, is that considered "human intervention" and does that make that human the author of that image?

I guess we will see when this gets tested in court. This current case linked to in the original article does not address this since the plaintiff already waived their own right to copyright already before copyright office.

There are 3 scenarios:

1) The AI should be the copyright holder (this judgement says NO).

2) If not 1 then the human should be the copyright holder via work-for-hire (this judgement says NO).

3) Human should be the copyright holder because they're the only human involved in the authoring (this lawsuit does not address this since direct copyright claims had already been waived).

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

#195

Post by spauldo »

observationist wrote: post #116
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…

I see this as "That thing which doesn't work is currently not working. Again." The DMCA and copyright laws and regulations in the US are predatory nonsense, carefully crafted by lawyers in order to exploit the maximum amount of cash possible from people who actually do produce things. The DMCA doesn't support artists and creators even indirectly; it empowers those least deserving and most ruthless to steal the profit…

That's a bit inflexible. Some authors spend their entire adult lives writing a single series of books - yanking copyright out from under them just isn't fair. The same is true of movie franchises, comics, and almost any kind of media that gets released over time.

I've spent some time considering the issue and have come to the conclusion that the truly broken part of copyright is that it provides no incentive to release unprofitable works to the public domain.

What I'd like to see is a system where maintaining copyright costs the copyright owners at an increasing rate. For example, set a term for copyright (say 5 years) and set the cost of registering copyright to 10^n, where n is the number of times you've registered the copyright before. Initial registration costs $1, years 6-10 cost $10, years 11-15 cost $100, and so on.

A system like this would benefit small creators (they'd have time to make a profit before renewal became cost prohibitive) and encourage companies like Disney to release works that aren't profitable anymore.

I'd also recommend using the money from this system to fund a digital archive run by the library of congress. You would need to provide a complete copy of the copyrighted work in order to receive a copyright. Any works that enter the public domain would be made available for, say, five years. That way, we wouldn't lose old works that are entering public domain but no copies exist anymore.

Obviously, there's all kinds of issues with a system like that and it would need to be fleshed out and clarified, but I think it'd be a good starting point.

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

#196

Post by pas »

JamesLeonis wrote: post #128
bagels wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

doesn't need to explicitly, it's enough to have the understanding that it's a "work for hire" situation (at least in the US)

of course just giving someone money is not sufficient to establish this, but telling someone that "I want to hire you to make a photo for me (of me)" and they acknowledge, then that is probably enough.

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

#197

Post by cess11 »

If that holds in the most supreme court it would likely kill the effort from the entertainment industry to replace artists with machines, no?

I don't really see the difference between asking Midjourney or whatever for an image, and asking my phone to fill a buffer from the camera sensors and fix that up into a "photograph".

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

#198

Post by randomNumber7 »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #134
quadragenarian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait just so i understand it, if a single human creates an AI model and trains it, and then prompts it to create an image, is that considered "human intervention" and does that make that human the author of that image? What if its a group of 5 humans that built the LLM and one of them prompts it? Isn't all AI built by some of group of humans? When is AI treated like its own entity like a monkey versus a tool made by…

I think in later cases we'll get some tests to apply about how much human intervention is required. Who trained the LLM is probably not the issue, the courts would likely want to know about the training material. If I trained a model exclusively on Warhol art, and then had that model create new images in Warhol's style, I didn't do any of the creative work and probably don't get the copyright. Warhol's estate probabl…

> If I trained a model exclusively on Warhol art, and then had that model create new images in Warhol's style, I didn't do any of the creative work and probably don't get the copyright.

If I watch exclusively Warhol images for years and then paint something similar I get copyright.

There needs to be a gray are, because usually art is not done in a vacuum?

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

#199

Post by majormajor »

acchow wrote: post #168
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…

> 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. If I set up an entire scene with props and artwork for a photoshoot with a model, but I would like to actually be the model so I ask a friend to go behind the tripod and tap the shutter, the friend holds the copyright?

You would make a contract with a copyright assignment.

The monkey situation is kinda screwy of course because ... a contract with a monkey?

"No copyright" as a result in the monkey case seems like a technically legally correct but sad outcome.

For AI tools it's likely currently technically correct as well, but the law probably needs some updating.

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

#200

Post by pas »

cma wrote: post #110
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…

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…

it depends on the courts. the law is simply complex and still vague.
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