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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

#221

Post by dragonwriter »

pmoriarty wrote: post #203
dragonwriter wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They’re only consequences in the sense that definitions are consequences, A priori truths are, exactly and only, those things that are true by definition (and only exist within a particular axiomatic framework.) You’ve described exactly why rights can only be a priori , but used it to deny that they are. > They don’t exist before they are defined by humans, so in that sense they do not have an a priori existence. I…

I think the difficulty we're having in communicating here is that I'm not using "a priori" in the Kantian sense as being in contrast to "a posteriori", but rather in the colloquial sense of "having a prior existence". It's also irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make how or whether humans have knowledge of some pre-existing things (through experience or through some other means). Since you brought up axiomatic fra…

> I think the difficulty we’re having in communicating here is that I’m not using “a priori” in the Kantian sense as being in contrast to “a posteriori”, but rather in the colloquial sense of “having a prior existence”.

“Having a prior existence” is very much what a posteriori is (a priori or a posteriori are epistemic terms, they don’t refer to the thing itself, but to our knowledge of the thing, if our knowledge is independent of our experience [as it is with things with no prior existence of their own] then it is a priori, if it is derived from experience [as it is for things that have prior natural existence rather than being pure products of intellect] it is a posteriori.)

Sure, if you reverse the definition of a priori, it applies to exactly the opposite of the things it usually applies to, but that’s probably not the best way to communicate. (And this is literally the first time I've ever heard the suggestion of an English "colloquial sense" of that phrase, which is used exclusively, in my experience, as a technical term of art in epistemology (and is used in English largely because an imported Latin technical term won't conflict with any colloquial understanding that might attach to a more natural English alternative.)

> > Since you brought up axiomatic frameworks, I’ll have to differ on that as well, as I don’t think the majority of humans that talk about rights do so based on any kind of axiomatic framework, but rather on their biases and because they’ve essentially been brainwashed in to thinking that way through education, socialization, the media, peer pressure, parenting, etc..

That’s still an axiomatic framework, its just one that is practically useless to discuss because each of the things which you might like to be conclusions dependent on logic and a smaller set of simple principles are just independent axioms not subject to debate. And, yes, its very common.

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

#222

Post by visarga »

michrassena wrote: post #190
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #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 un…

Is the lack of human authorship the gist of the argument? Can you claim copyright on the output from a compiler? Or is this like work for hire, where you just give instructions to the creative professional?

If it's an optimising compiler like the ones used in deep learning, then it might have a substantial contribution.

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

#223

Post by dublinben »

visarga wrote: post #217
dragonwriter wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also don’t overlook that this is a “solely a prompt”; real non-trivial workflows for systems like SD (MJ I’ve used less) are different than “solely a prompt” and may or may not result in the same result even at the Copyright Office level.

Add one manual detail here and there on the image, they will have copyright protection.

This position statement makes it clear that only the manual details themselves merit protection, the base image itself must be disclaimed from the copyright registration. It would be fraud to attempt otherwise.

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

#224

Post by visarga »

statop wrote: post #172
mikehollinger wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue to me here is that code is a literary work. Literary works are copywritable. Except that AI generated works without human authorship aren’t per this. Interestingly this came up when copilot was announced and one comment or another was “this will be an interesting bit of case law.” Well now we have to see who wants to go first and establish precedent for the next half-century. :-)

It isn't AI, it's a glorified Xerox machine.

That form of AI has already been invented long ago, it's called simply Copy & Paste.

GPT combines prompt, context and knowledge, it selects and adapts code. It even does problem solving: above average human rating on easy problems and 20% over humans on medium level problems. When did the xerox or parrot for that matter do that?

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

#225

Post by chii »

person3 wrote: post #204
chii wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take it to the extreme - if you randomly outputted noise as a picture, that picture is not copyrightable (or ditto with random letters/numbers and printed it as a book). It feels to me that the copyright office is using this similar line of logic, to make the claim that the resultant work is not copyrightable if it was wholly generated using _only_ a prompt and an AI.

It's a bit odd though. What if you built your own ML model and trained it over a set of data that your wrote yourself. Would the work generated by the AI based of your prompts be not be copyrightable? The original copyright laws were thought up way before even cameras, and we're still trying to apply them today to generated AI. Why can't we just realize that the world is very different now, and just create new laws?…

> The original copyright laws were thought up way before even cameras, and we're still trying to apply them today to generated AI

but the original laws worked well with cameras didnt it?

The legal idea, that unless a human had creative input, it won't have copyright, doesn't fall afoul of ai generated content. There's nuance of course - what counts as creative input etc.

Of course, a new paradigm is possible with the advent of AI, but it would make copyright _looser_, rather than tighter, imho (and it would be to the progress of the arts and science to do so). But i don't see why it is fundamentally needed.

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

#226

Post by olyjohn »

hammock wrote: post #164
brookst wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The camera doesn’t decide what to put on the picture?

It does… or at least the human doesn’t.. it’s motion activated

The camera is not making a decision. The human made the decision to set the camera up to take pictures when motion activated.

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

#227

Post by RHSeeger »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #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 un…

I'm curious where the "line" is, though. If I do a web search for a term, I get various results. As I refine my search, the results get closer to what I want. Eventually, there comes a point where it's possible to recognize that there is "skill" associated with crafting a good web search. To some extent, the same is true of crafting what you tell the AI to generate for you; especially as AIs become more complex in what they can be told to do.

So, given that, at what point does enough creativity go into the crafting of the instructions that it _can_ be considered, at least in part, a work by the person giving the commands.

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

#228

Post by ROTMetro »

laserbeam wrote: post #220
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #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 un…

> these prompts function more like instructions to a commissioned artist I find this very reasonable and a great analogy. However, today, can one not copyright commissioned work? Can a company not own copyright for work produced by its employees?

In that scenario the original artist is granted copyright and assigns it to the company. Another option would be for the artist to 'license' the work to the company and keep copyright ownership themselves. Since there is no original artist to be granted copyright then there is no one to assign it to the company so no copyright under current statute. I and others got so many downvotes here for pointing this out previously.

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

#229

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #170
kccqzy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the linked article? > In Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, a defendant accused of making unauthorized copies of a photograph argued that the expansion of copyright protection to photographs by Congress was unconstitutional because “a photograph is not a writing nor the production of an author” but is instead created by a camera. The Court disagreed, holding that there was “no doubt” the Constituti…

"so far as they are representatives of original intellectual conceptions of the author." "representatives of original intellectual conceptions"? Wouldn't that only to apply to photos made with some preconceived idea of what you wanted the photo to look like? What about spontaneous, "point and shoot" photos? What about a photo that I take with my eyes closed, without intent? And how original is your typical family sna…

point and shoot is almost certainly copyrighted. eyes closed might not be, (I kind of doubt there's case law here). the bar for originally is pretty low for copyright but it's not zero.
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