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AI-assisted art – A mixed decision from the copyright office

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Re: AI-assisted art – A mixed decision from the copyright office

#31
What's the argument for why prompt generation deserves copyright protection that doesn't also imply that commissioning a piece of artwork deserves copyright protection?

If I go to a human and ask them to draw me an image, I will iterate and collaborate with my prompt just as much if not more than I would for an AI generated image. I'll look through multiple pictures and point out things I like and dislike. But I won't get joint copyright over the final image unless the artist gives me a contract assigning it. We recognize that collaboration with a human to describe a final image isn't something that usually falls in the narrow range of copyright.

So the argument around prompt generation seems like it has much wider implications than most copyright-expansionists are saying. I don't understand how to grant AI images copyright without granting a bunch of other stuff copyright too. And traditionally, we don't think of commissioning as a copyrightable act, even though it arguably has very similar elements of creativity that are being talked about here.

Is there a creative human input into an AI-generated image that isn't present when commissioning or working with a human artist? Because otherwise we're talking about a frankly massive expansion of copyright that should probably be approached with a lot more caution. I mean, some of these arguments I see for granting copyright are getting really close to outright saying that deciding what to draw should be treated as creative enough to warrant protection. That's a wild thing to say, that has so many implications beyond just AI images.

Re: AI-assisted art – A mixed decision from the copyright office

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the input is a prompt that anyone can write Pressing the button, on an already setup camera, is something that anyone can do as well, and they will get the exact same camera output as anyone else.

To be clear, pressing a button is not copyrightable. The decision about where to take a picture, what settings to use, and how to take it is the creativity that grants the image copyright. There are various arguments about which parts of prompt generation and refinement might register as copyright and there are various arguments about how tuning settings and tuning prompts is similarly creative to using a camera, but…

> The decision about where to take a picture, what settings to use, and how to take it is the creativity that grants the image copyright.

Indeed that is the case! And all the factors that you are talking about, could apply just as much to AI art. I am glad that you reject this idea, that "Lul, its writing a prompt, dude, therefore AI Art can't be copyrighted!"

> but if that was the entire creative input

> it's the human creativity that matters.

Sure, if we want to say that someone spending 10 seconds, writing a 3 word prompt isn't much human input, fine.

But, for anyone who has spent more than an hour, messing around with AI art, you will quickly learn that there is so much more to AI art than the degenerate case.

> The person making a conscious decision about where to stand, what settings to use, and when to press the button is viewed by the law as a creative act that requires creative skill and execution.

All of which can be applied to AI art. It can be so much more complicated, than the stupid argument that I see over an over again, which is "Lul, the computer did it. No human input".

To give a personal example, one thing that I did, was that I created a dreambooth, fine tuned model, for creating magic items, for the game Dungeons and Dragons.

https://huggingface.co/stale2000/sd-dnditem

It took me about 100 hours, over the course of 2 weeks, to get this art generator, exactly right. And the process involved, not just typing a few words like "Give me magic fire sword please".

Instead, it involved the process of collecting, modifying, captioning, and combining exactly the correct training set of images, into my training set, recreating and retraining my model over a dozen times, until I could get it to do even close to what I wanted.

Even one bad image or one bad setting, that I put in my training set, could screw up the whole model, or make the swords look weird, or mess up the painting style, or any numerous actual creative differences.

> If the argument is that prompt generation is more than that, and that it takes more skill, then fine

That is what it is, for anyone who has done anything in AI art. But people's brains for some reason, stop working when they are faced with the fact that there is so much more that you can do with this stuff, and the stupid strawman case of "lul, I just typed a couple words into a prompt! No human input!".

Re: AI-assisted art – A mixed decision from the copyright office

#34

What's the argument for why prompt generation deserves copyright protection that doesn't also imply that commissioning a piece of artwork deserves copyright protection? If I go to a human and ask them to draw me an image, I will iterate and collaborate with my prompt just as much if not more than I would for an AI generated image. I'll look through multiple pictures and point out things I like and dislike. But I won'…

[deleted]

Re: AI-assisted art – A mixed decision from the copyright office

#35
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A photo that tries to capture an existing painting as closely as possible is not copyrightable. However, even minor changes (such as changing the tint of the photo) have been found to be enough for copyrightability.

AI is far more productive, and easier in modifying source pictures, than photography. Controlnet is not a mere tint, it can generate 20 artstyle variations of the source image in 30 seconds. No artist will have any income if this those AI outputs are copyrightable without cost. I don't think past-decisions are that important here. There'll definitely be new laws around AI generated content, that set clear standards.…

This is the same as saying that the generative art (which has been a thing for decades) provides infinite variation. This is only technically true: the "infinite" variations of the procedurally generated art are all constrained by the original creator's intent, which is exactly what gives such art value.

The generative art is not set in fixed pixels, but instead is represented in a fuzzy form (equations, algorithms etc) that slightly varies each time you look at it. The value of it is also constrained by the author's intent and work. Only humans can be subject to copyright, so it at least makes common (if not legal) sense.

ML models are the same as the generative art that previously existed - they only add the captured essence of the prior data to the mix of human artistic intent and hard algorithms.

Re: AI-assisted art – A mixed decision from the copyright office

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, pressing a button is not copyrightable. The decision about where to take a picture, what settings to use, and how to take it is the creativity that grants the image copyright. There are various arguments about which parts of prompt generation and refinement might register as copyright and there are various arguments about how tuning settings and tuning prompts is similarly creative to using a camera, but…

> The decision about where to take a picture, what settings to use, and how to take it is the creativity that grants the image copyright. Indeed that is the case! And all the factors that you are talking about, could apply just as much to AI art. I am glad that you reject this idea, that "Lul, its writing a prompt, dude, therefore AI Art can't be copyrighted!" > but if that was the entire creative input > it's the hu…

Which, fine, I'm much more sympathetic to the argument that prompt generation and tuning is creative. I'm not necessarily on-board with it because there are different categories of creativity (APIs and recipes certainly require creativity, but we somewhat arbitrarily classify them as inventions instead), but the point is it's a decent argument for people to make, and I could plausibly see it winning in a court.

I'm just trying to point out, it doesn't have anything to do with the button, or AI, or technology. It's not a good analogy for people to say "you just point a camera at a thing, and that deserves copyright" -- if that was the case, the camera wouldn't get copyright either. Neither prompt-generation nor photography is getting granted copyright based on the decision to press a button, there has to be something more complex going on in both situations for copyright to get involved.

An accidental photograph, a photograph that's made by simply iterating over every possibility in a space, a photograph that's a reconstruction of an existing copyrighted work without changes, etc, etc... none of those are copyrightable, and that they're made with a camera doesn't make them copyrightable. IP law for photography is the same as for anything else; the machine isn't the important part.

In the scenario you describe, if someone mounts a camera someplace and two people press a button and get the exact same photo -- I would be surprised if that second photo has copyright protection, it probably doesn't meet a threshold for human creativity.

Re: AI-assisted art – A mixed decision from the copyright office

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a photograph of a painting itself copyrighted? Img2img or controlnet can basically do that, in less than 30 seconds. Even as someone extremely pro-AI art, I don't think AI-generated content should have copyright in the usual sense. Every art model was trained on massive amounts of copyrighted data, it would be very hypocritical to suddenly claim strong copyright on the output of AI generated items. I think AI gene…

> The ones with significant amounts of attention, post-editing, and economic value, the AI artist can simply register at the copyright office. Even leaving aside that some people think coming up a prompt or choosing from multiple generated images is itself work enough to justify copyright you'll have so many very similar images registered that copyright trolls could still intimidate people into forking over settlemen…

> "it encourages commercial projects to hire human artists so that they can gain the protection of copyright"

Nobody will ever know if a human was involved or not.

Re: AI-assisted art – A mixed decision from the copyright office

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ones with significant amounts of attention, post-editing, and economic value, the AI artist can simply register at the copyright office. Even leaving aside that some people think coming up a prompt or choosing from multiple generated images is itself work enough to justify copyright you'll have so many very similar images registered that copyright trolls could still intimidate people into forking over settlemen…

"it encourages commercial projects to hire human artists so that they can gain the protection of copyright" How is this relevant to AI copyright? If AI art is copyrightable, they'd still need someone to generate the AI art. That person is an 'artist' in the legal sense, regardless if they can draw or not. If AI art is not copyrightable, they can still hire a non-artist (fully outsourcable), to do some minor post-edit…

> If AI art is not copyrightable, they can still hire a non-artist (fully outsourcable), to do some minor post-editing of the AI art, and copyright it.

I'm arguing that they shouldn't be able to do that either. If a company wants to create something protected by copyright they should hire a human to do it. If they don't care about the copyright, then they can take advantage of AI generated art and everyone else can use the result for whatever they want. It makes it easy. If an AI made it, no copyright. If a human made it, copyright. There's no bickering over whether or not someone spent enough time post-editing or coming up with the perfect prompt. Artists stay employable, more artistic works gets into the public domain and there are no restrictions on how AI generated art can be used and no opportunity for copyright trolls to abuse the system. Everybody wins.

Re: AI-assisted art – A mixed decision from the copyright office

#40
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A photo that tries to capture an existing painting as closely as possible is not copyrightable. However, even minor changes (such as changing the tint of the photo) have been found to be enough for copyrightability.

AI is far more productive, and easier in modifying source pictures, than photography. Controlnet is not a mere tint, it can generate 20 artstyle variations of the source image in 30 seconds. No artist will have any income if this those AI outputs are copyrightable without cost. I don't think past-decisions are that important here. There'll definitely be new laws around AI generated content, that set clear standards.…

What is the value of artists having incomes if the same art can be generated instead?
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