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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

#501

Post by freejazz »

johnisgood wrote: post #397
sejje wrote: 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?

There's plenty of jurisprudence on these issues for posters here to interact with, but in classic HN style, they will just keep pushing these arguments back and forth based on the headline for this one instance. People just want to play law, not actually interact with it.

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

#502

Post by freejazz »

bb88 wrote: post #212
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright. Wait, so if I have a script that generates some source-code autonomously (based on whatever trigger I setup say in a ci/cd pipeline) then that code is not copyrightable? What about macros? This seems silly to me.

I think this ruling is wrong. It's not hard to imagine a compiler using AI to optimize byte code, and so now the binary it creates is no longer copyrightable? Compilers and transpilers, even though someone else may have wrote them, the courts have held the the copyright of the output binary is whoever wrote the source code. In that sense AI is nothing more than a English language to image compiler.

You think this ruling on photography is wrong because of a strained comparison to AI use in a compiler? Take a step back and rethink your approach. The copyright office here is dealing with fundamental principles, not worrying about what the impacts will be to the use of compilers.

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

#503

Post by freejazz »

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?

Typically you need the permission of a copyright owner to create derivatives of their work.

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

#504

Post by freejazz »

DougBTX wrote: post #437
tpm wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When no one owns copyrights - everyone does. Both you and you custom have full rights to copy and distribute those parts of software as do everyone else, you just don't own exclusive rights (copyrights) to control whether and how anyone else can also copy those parts of software. Do you own copyright for number "10", does it mean you can't use it in your software. Yes. It can be an issue depending of the wording of…

> For example, if 'you' agreed to develop a piece of software 'exclusively' for the customer, and then use AI to create substantial parts of the software, then neither it was 'you' who developed that, nor was it 'exclusively' for the customer On the other hand, if ‘you’ had taken no action at all, then there would be no software at all. The actions by ‘you’ are necessary for the software to exist, so the argument mus…

>The actions by ‘you’ are necessary for the software to exist, so the argument must be about whether those actions count as development or not.

Definition? Yes, but it's required over a hundred years of jurisprudence to apply it to different scenarios, in the US at least. It's amusing that you think the definition would clear things up.

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

#505

Post by seanhunter »

tiborsaas wrote: post #495
seanhunter wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is true today. You can have copyright on this phrase, just consider if it were the title of a song or poem. That is not true today. You don't get a copyright on a phrase in particular if it was the title of a poem or song. For example: "There's something in the way she moves" by James Taylor[1] and "Something" by the Beatles[2] which starts with the same line. James has the copyright over his song call…

I'm confused, are they both entitled to their copyright? (which I think should be the case)

They have copyright oveer their respective songs, not the phrase, so it disproves your statement that you can have copyright over a phase. It can be a trademark but not be copyrighted

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

#506

Post by Suppafly »

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…

I think part of it is that he made such a big deal about saying the monkey took his camera and took the photo, to drum up excitement about the whole thing, not realizing that the rest of the world would use that as an excuse to publish his photo without giving him credit for it. I'm not even sure the monkey actually took the photo itself, but the story that made the photo popular has been the story for so long that he can't walk it back now.

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

#507

Post by Suppafly »

radlad wrote: post #112
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…

Who owns the copyright when you ask someone to take a photo of you using your phone in a tourist location? According to Wikimedia's legal analysis, it depends.[0] Furthermore, authorship and copyright are distinct. [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Authorship_and_Cop...

>Who owns the copyright when you ask someone to take a photo of you using your phone in a tourist location?

Wouldn't that be a 'work for hire' situation?

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

#508

Post by freejazz »

DecentShoes wrote: post #226
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…

Why is the person who "took the photo" the thing that pressed the button and not the person who did 99% of the work?

It isn't necessarily one or the other, it depends on numerous factors. Works can be made for hire as one example. Annie Liebowitz still is the author of a photograph even if she has her assistant pull the shutter. You might even be surprised to realize that is an incredibly common occurrence in professional studio photography. Everyone in this thread is searching for one really quick answer to apply to all situations and it does not work that way. The courts look at a number of factors to make these determinations.

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

#509

Post by Suppafly »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #438
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…

You better be willing to question whether photographs can be copyrightable at all, because they are all result of several mechanical systems not created by the camera operator. Just limiting yourself to only "digital computation" being magical enough to invalidate copyright is an arbitrary restriction. Unless you clarify why you think the computation performed by the lens system doesn't have that property, further di…

>You better be willing to question whether photographs can be copyrightable at all, because they are all result of several mechanical systems not created by the camera operator.

That is a good point that a lot of people don't want to address. A lot of the 'creative' part of the process is actually being done by the software in the camera.

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

#510

Post by Suppafly »

mschuster91 wrote: post #432
radlad wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who owns the copyright when you ask someone to take a photo of you using your phone in a tourist location? According to Wikimedia's legal analysis, it depends.[0] Furthermore, authorship and copyright are distinct. [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Authorship_and_Cop...

Let me add something even more funny: in Germany, some buildings and art installations are copyrighted which means they aren't allowed to be photographed for non-private usage despite being literally out in the open for everyone to see [1]. [1] https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000108536963/schraeges-urh...

> in Germany, some buildings and art installations are copyrighted which means they aren't allowed to be photographed for non-private usage despite being literally out in the open for everyone to see [1].

I think most people agree that that is ridiculous. I'm not sure how they manage to enforce that, even with Europe's generally strong ideas around copyright and moral ownership and such.

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