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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

#551

Post by [deleted] »

tantalor wrote: post #92
mikehearn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#552

Post by kazinator »

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...

Generally, whoever has more money for better lawyers, and/or is more intimidating or threatening.

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

#553

Post by foxyv »

regulation_d wrote: post #90
bogwog wrote: post #19

I think that's a good ruling. Say I create a website that just sells AI generated logos. I set up some automation so I'm constantly generating millions of logos per day. I also have a bot that scrapes the web to try and find anyone using a logo similar to the ones on my website, and then send legal threats demanding payment for copying my artwork. I'm sure more imaginative scammers will find a way to copyright troll…

Copyright law: A reason that copyright trolls are less common than patent trolls is that under copyright law, works created independently are not infringing. In court, you might have to prove that you did actually create the thing independently, but I think most juries would be sympathetic to this case. "Oh, you think that the defendant combed through your giant library of millions of logos to find this one specific,…

Usually the method of a copyright troll never reaches the jury stage. It's mostly a racquet to get people to pay you not to sue them or file vaguely legitimate DMCA takedowns on their content.

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

#554

Post by soulofmischief »

creer wrote: post #285
soulofmischief wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I tell my assistant to snap a photo, it's still credited to me, not them, though I might also credit them. If I tell my assistant, who happens to be a monkey, to snap a photo, it's credited to... the public? This is such a clear example of why US copyright law is incoherent, outdated, close-minded and desperately in need of reform. Just because something has been ruled on doesn't mean it's correct or ethically sat…

> If I tell my assistant to snap a photo, it's still credited to me, not them, though I might also credit them. You can do what you want. But only legally so if their contract says so.

I was speaking in general about the law, individual contracts nonwithstanding.

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

#555

Post by wruza »

behringer wrote: post #545
wruza wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Not really. It contains all kinds of copyrightable data. It's like a dictionary of phrases. Sire there are lots of generic ones, "a lot of", "this or that" and then there are novel ones "It is a truth universally acknowledged". Your writing and artwork will contain these novel bits and if your accidentally string the right few together you're suddenly in a lot of trouble.

Do you see that in practice? E.g. after you finetune an llm/sd model, does it string it together?

Can't speak for llms, but I'm an SD enthusiast with 2 YoE, which tells me that most of these threads have nearly no idea what they are talking and theorizing about. I see meaningless reductions to technicalities similar to "it's just neurons firing" and general lack of basic knowledge that should come with the minimal practice beyond just talking to it. While working hard to actually reproduce the concepts from the training sets in a way that can be called resembling-enough and compatible with other models.

So I apologize if this sounds challenging, but I'm not into a bare philosophy around AI. Practice tells me a completely different story than these threads tend to express, and I know that very few people actually tinker with AI any deeper than trying to write system/instruction prompts into the chat-mode chat box.

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

#556

Post by wruza »

Riverheart wrote: post #538
wruza wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what. Why do you think that determinism should play any role here?

2 + 2 = 4 Nothing inspired or creative about it. It comes out the same every time no matter who calculates it. That’s what people want to copyright except the first 2 is other people’s art and the second 2 are the weights. Why do you think it doesn’t matter?

Because it's not a process of copying.

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

#557

Post by wruza »

oytis wrote: post #542
wruza wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what. Why do you think that determinism should play any role here?

Determinism or randomness should play no role here. The fact that the output is a function of model, training data and prompt (and nothing else) makes the result a derived work from the training data.

By stretching "derived" that far you inevitably cover pre-AI human inspirations. It doesn't make sense.

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

#558

Post by creer »

soulofmischief wrote: post #554
creer wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I tell my assistant to snap a photo, it's still credited to me, not them, though I might also credit them. You can do what you want. But only legally so if their contract says so.

I was speaking in general about the law, individual contracts nonwithstanding.

> I was speaking in general about the law, individual contracts nonwithstanding.

Then no. If your assistant snaps the photo and their contract doesn't try to address this, then they are the author (in US law) and could file for and fight you for, the copyright. You can credit each other as much as you want - US law doesn't care much about that. European law tends to care.

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

#559

Post by Riverheart »

wruza wrote: post #557
oytis wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Determinism or randomness should play no role here. The fact that the output is a function of model, training data and prompt (and nothing else) makes the result a derived work from the training data.

By stretching "derived" that far you inevitably cover pre-AI human inspirations. It doesn't make sense.

It makes sense if you don’t think of humans as tools and think of art consumption pre-AI. Very little would be made public if people thought their work would get scooped up to create these models.

I, and others, don’t care if the process of observing and generating output works the same way because people and tools don’t need to be held to the same standard. As I’ve said numerous times elsewhere, big picture, AI and humans are different in practically every other way and that is seemingly never taken into consideration when promoting AI adoption. It’s also a big leap to say we fully understand how human creativity works which is still under study.

You may, I could be wrong, believe oppositely because it means you can benefit directly from these tools but other people view it through the lens of what they or others may lose and that is no less rational. Social constructs require social consensus. If you got rid of capitalism people might be more open to your viewpoint but as it stands this just smells like socializing human creativity for free, in a way people could never anticipate, to make other people money, no doubt consolidating more power in corporations, who can afford to run the models at scale, as is standard.

I suppose we’re unlikely to agree so I’ll leave it at this.

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

#560

Post by make3 »

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…

you're arguably the one doing the AI futurist here by treating the AI not as a tool but as a being like a monkey.

the non futuristic thing to do would be to just see it as a tool, like a procedural image generator, which it is, & give the copyright to whoever ran the AI tool, depending on their contact with the AI service

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