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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

#331

Post by jarsin »

protocolture wrote: post #322
jarsin wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You left out the big "but". But if ai gets more optimized and automated our current conclusion will be more bolstered.

Not really, thats covered well by: "There may come a time when prompts can sufficiently control expressive elements in AI-generated outputs to reflect human authorship. If further advances in technology provide users with increased control over those expressive elements, a different conclusion may be called for" Because any "advancement" in this space is predicated on getting tighter control over the requested outcom…

The "but" is literally in response to what you quoted.

For example if I code an entire application in c by myself without ai then told ai to redo the whole thing in rust I would retain copyright.

If you just prompt the same application from scratch and accept by in large the outputs. No copyrighht. This is how the vast majority are using it to create new systems not using it as a tool to enhance majority human generated code or images or books etc.

The more it creates from pure prompts the lesser chance you have to claim copyright.

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

#332

Post by nightski »

therealpygon wrote: post #304
davely wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof, this gets into all sorts of weird legal grey areas. - All of our phones do a bunch of computational photography where AI tooling improves a photo in various ways. In that case, is any photo taken by a modern phone not copyrightable? - If it is copyrightable, what if someone uses an Img2Img tool or inpainting with something like Stable Diffusion (or Photoshop) in order to slightly modify an image. Is that no long…

In short, in situation 1 there is no issue. In situation 2, if the original image can be copyrighted, AI tooling to augment the image doesn’t prevent copyright. The copyright offices guidance on the subject is a worthwhile read, since they detail out the difference between using AI as a tool to modify human authorship, vs the AI taking minimal input alone and generating a resulting image.

"Minimal input" like pushing a button on a camera? Seems to me that is more minimal than some of the elaborate prompting it takes to get AI to output a desired image.

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

#333

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

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…

> A computer cannot be the author but 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.

I agree with your statement up to this point. I think there’s a very murky area here specifically with AI because it was trained on works that the “author” (prompter) is not privy to on copyright. So I don’t think that it immediately or necessarily follows that this kind of human intervention is copyrightable.

For specific AI tooling like image enhancers running on your phone that were not trained on any copyrightable material this makes sense though.

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

#334

Post by Aloisius »

sahila wrote: post #315
Aloisius wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compiled byte code is a derivative work of the original source code. Copyright extends to derivative works.

Wouldn't AI generated art be derivative work done by Google (or whoever) when creating their Gemini models? So then Google owns all gemini created ai artwork?

1. Model weights may not be copyrightable.

2. Copyright protects copying. Expressive elements from the original creative work (source code) exist in the byte code, thus it remains under the original copyright.

3. For a derivative work to be considered a newly copyrightable work (as opposed to a copy subject to the original's copyright), it must contain new substantive human creative expression (whether the original creator also has a copyright claim as well depends on degree of transformation).

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

#335

Post by handoflixue »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #242
visarga wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not really a fan of destroying a framework just because some rich people finally find it inconvenient. You know it won't be retroactive anyway.

The common people have always found it inconvenient.

Pirated media routinely has a better user experience than otherwise. AO3 shows how powerfully people are drawn to fan-fiction (which still exists in a very legally grey area, despite the size of the community). I don't think a lot of people here support what happened to Aaron Swartz. "Information wants to be free".

If it's also now inconvenient to the rich, I think one can reasonably ask who exactly is benefiting?

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

#337

Post by falcor84 »

Aloisius wrote: post #293
falcor84 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But typical contracts have the employee immediately assign copyright to the company, such that they never hold it. So I just don't see where the line is. In the extreme case, what if I am CEO of a company that has no other employees, and it's just me, pressing Enter once a day on a script named keep_creating_stuff.py, with the script generating shitloads of IP that is presumably mine for a microsecond before being au…

An employment contract where you agree to assign copyrights to them for any works you create doesn't make uncopyrightable works you create somehow become copyrightable.

> ... uncopyrightable works you create ..

But there's the rub, right? If "you create" it, then it is copyrightable - so what is it that is this act of creation?

As posed elsewhere in this thread mentioned, how come taking out my phone and pressing the camera button with no authorial intent whatsoever is considered to be creative, whereas setting up a camera in a particular location and fully determining its settings, but letting an animal depress the button is considered to not be creative?

Part of the reason that this is on my mind is that I recently watched "Flash of Genius" [0] and found the legal arguments there about what merits an invention versus being obvious entirely silly. Essentially the movie (and my experience) shows that it all boils down to who has more time and money to spend on the legal system. I'm not saying that I have a clear solution myself, but I would really love to have something that is more than just "I know it when I see it".

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1054588/

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

#338

Post by Aloisius »

falcor84 wrote: post #337
Aloisius wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An employment contract where you agree to assign copyrights to them for any works you create doesn't make uncopyrightable works you create somehow become copyrightable.

> ... uncopyrightable works you create .. But there's the rub, right? If "you create" it, then it is copyrightable - so what is it that is this act of creation? As posed elsewhere in this thread mentioned, how come taking out my phone and pressing the camera button with no authorial intent whatsoever is considered to be creative, whereas setting up a camera in a particular location and fully determining its settings,…

> If "you create" it, then it is copyrightable

No. Not everything people create is copyrightable.

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf

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