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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

#411

So just don't tell anyone you used AI? How exactly are they going to prove it? And does this mean any works created with the assistance of graphics software, like Photoshop, are not copyrightable? What is the definition of AI here? They failed to define what AI means, which means that if there is no test, the ruling can't stand on its own.

The court didn't rule that AI generated art isn't eligible for copyright at all. They ruled that only humans may be assigned a copyright. If you are a human that uses AI as a tool to create something, the door is still open for you to claim copyright as a human. The court is ruling that computers themselves don't have the human right to copyright. Not exactly surprising.

you are right

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

#412
post #235
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The same can be said for AI art. If you think you can exactly reproduce stylistically of some of the more popular AI work, you would be mistaken.

I agree, to an extent. I mentioned it in another comment but IMO there's a big difference between someone who types a low-effort prompt like "silly image of a cat" and someone who spends hours or days iterating on a prompt. Or someone who uses AI to iteratively tweak an image (which may or may not have initially been AI-generated.) Or someone who creates art out of smaller components created by AI (e.g. textures.)

It’s just a new phenomenon that you can get a relatively sophisticated result from a short sentence. But the amount of efforts or iterations doesn’t condition anything here.

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

#413
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I ask a stranger to take my photo, and it turns out he's Ansel Adams? He's going to make some decisions about the framing etc, as one of the best photographers of all time.

So if I ask someone to take a photo, but I tell them "tilt the camera", I am the copyright holder, but if they do so without me "prompting" them, then I no longer am? Am I understanding you correctly?

What if Louis XVI ask Antoine Callet to use a lighter color for his skin? Does he own the Callet painting copyright?

You can prompt whatever you want but won’t own the copyright. Photographer will choose himself if he follow or not your "prompt", what side and angle he tilt, the zoom, when to press the shutter…

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

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's next? Shutting down an AI is murder? I can see a possible future where AI actually exists and shutting one down could be murder. At that point it would even be a good thing to grant the AI personhood. What passes for "AI" these days doesn't come anywhere close to that, but I wouldn't say it could never happen.

About 95% of the conversation about “AI” has this problem right now: there are some interesting theoretical legal and social implications from AI, but what we have right now are LLMs, not AI. They can’t replace your workers, they can’t make art, they can’t hold copyright, not because the law doesn’t treat them as people, but because they’re a fancy autocomplete algorithm that spits out text convincing enough to spike…

With image AI there are structural editing tools that can include the creator drawing guide images. I think there's a point at which this makes things a bit more like collage of found media, and I believe this is more of an authored creation when compared to Richard Prince's using someone else's Instagram selfie and repurposing that as his art by adding a comment to it and screen-grabbing it. What is and isn't art is sometimes to me, clearer than copyright ownership and sometimes vice-versa.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/30/8691257/richard-prince-in...

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

#415
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…

Ai data is gathered from public and private sources. Unless that data is entirely private source, it's inappropriate to be able to copyright those derivitive works.

They are inspired though, not derivative. AI models contain no source data in a reproducible form (not that it really matters, but in case it is, they can’t).

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

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta be 1,000 words.

> Gotta be 1,000 words. What? Why? There's poems and stories shorter than that that must be copyrightable.

There's a saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words".

Regarding poetry, while I share your sentiment, what I notice in these discussions is that the emotional response to "done by AI" vs. "done by human" (or, on other forums, "done by furry") counts for a lot.

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

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I ask someone to take a photo, but I tell them "tilt the camera", I am the copyright holder, but if they do so without me "prompting" them, then I no longer am? Am I understanding you correctly?

What if Louis XVI ask Antoine Callet to use a lighter color for his skin? Does he own the Callet painting copyright? You can prompt whatever you want but won’t own the copyright. Photographer will choose himself if he follow or not your "prompt", what side and angle he tilt, the zoom, when to press the shutter…

What if I set a delay but it is not technically me who presses the key? Would that count because it was me who set the delay? What if I tell a friend to set the delay?

All this is pretty much grey area anyways. Both sides have merit.

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

#418
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…

Consider these (rhetorical, I am not sure I'm up for the nuanced debate given IANAL) questions:

1. Who owns the rights to a commissioned piece of art? The artist, or the commissioner? Which rights?

2. What about derived works of art made with or without the permission of the original artist(s)? When a book is turned into a film, who "rightfully" owns what? When the Rolling Stones wrote Sympathy For the Devil, did the estate of Mikhail Bulgakov have a right to feel aggrieved, and should they have received royalties?

3. What rights can be assigned/transferred, and what rights can't be? What needs to happen for that process to be legally binding?

4. Is a monkey capable of being a willing participant in a photograph, or a contract assigning rights in any way?

5. Same question, but for a machine? What does it mean for an AI to assign rights, or assert moral rights?

5. If the law makes it clear that a legal party to a statute (law), or contract must be a human or other legal subject (an incorporated business), can those laws and contracts lawfully apply to an animal or machine?

6. What is the intent of intellectual property law? Many argue it is mostly civil law, that follows the spirit of civil law in striving towards fairness?

We can argue if intellectual property law implementation is just, but your issue seems to be that the time invested in planning a creative act is the central tenet on which a copyright protection should be determined.

If so, Picasso was wrong to argue that his quick sketch on a napkin took him "a lifetime" to create, and your argument is just and correct. I disagree.

Regardless, what do you think the law is attempting to actually protect which is not "time taken to plan and create the work"?

Note when thinking about these questions it might be helpful to remember that ownership, copyright and moral rights are not all equivalent things in law.

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

#419
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…

> without human intervention

There is human intervention though when I prompt the AI. Without me, the AI would not even have generated the photo in the first place.

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

#420
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take out the second person and imagine if you set the camera to a timer. Perhaps we record the path of the sun every day for a year to create an analemma. That's something artistic that should absolutely qualify for copyright. Who owns the copyright then? Nobody? Because if so, that feels like bullshit. Like we're making up the rules completely arbitrarily with no logic at all. At some level in many electronic system…

I believe the correct answer is “nobody deserves the copyright”. It’s a big fat myth that creatives would starve if copyright disappeared tomorrow. Think of all the countless hours society has wasted arguing about who owns creative expression. If we assign it to the public, we can move on and find better ways to keep creatives housed and fed.

Creatives absolutely would suffer if they lost copyright protection.
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