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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

#61

Post by kopecs »

bilbo0s wrote: post #57
jedberg wrote: post #33

I'm not sure how this actually matters. Knowing this ruling exists, why would anyone ever claim an AI created their art without human assistance? Even if the AI created the art just from the prompt, the human still made the prompt. Even if the prompt was "make art". I just don't understand how you could ever have AI art without human intervention. Is there a legal definition of "human intervention" that has some mini…

Pretty sure this wouldn't pass the merit part unless the prompt was unusually long and precise. the human still made the prompt What I can guarantee, is that series of prompts itself would be copyright-able. (The series of prompts that ultimately created the image.) No matter how little they may weigh any one of those prompts in isolation. That is, assuming the EULA of the LLM doesn't require you to essentially place…

> What I can guarantee, is that the prompt itself would be copyright-able.

That's non-obvious to me. Even if the prompt is extremely long and precise, if it is somehow purely functional, it seems possible for it to not be (although in practice, I agree that most prompts could be).

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

#62

Post by golemotron »

This is clearly a case where we need new legislation. The US Copyright Act needed to be amended to cover photography. Prior to that photos were not copyrightable. It seems like we are on the same trajectory now.

The real problem is that Congress is institutionally incapable of making simple amendments to law. Everything gets delegated to agency rule making regardless of whether anyone likes the outcome.

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

#63

Post by koolala »

intrasight wrote: post #23

What, if any, practical implications does this have? Why would a real person or company want to specify a non real person as an author?

Unlicensed Human Code is 100% copyrighted and closed source.

Unlicensed AI Code is 0% copyrighted and open source and can't be closed.

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

#64

Post by jarsin »

ssalka wrote: post #49

I think the headline is overly broad, especially considering: > As a matter of statutory law, the Copyright Act requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being. Dr. Thaler’s copyright registration application listed the Creativity Machine as the work’s sole author, even though the Creativity Machine is not a human being. As a result, the Copyright Office appropriately denied Dr. Thaler’s appli…

The copyright office has already ruled recently that prompts are not enough to gain copyright no matter how detailed or how many iterations.

Furthermore, the Copyright Office stated that prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control, as AI models do not consistently follow instructions in the prompts and often "fill in the gaps" left by prompts and "generate multiple different outputs"

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

#65

Post by aydyn »

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…

Couldn't the same argument be made for photography? You aren't making the image, the camera is doing all the work.

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

#66

Post by p1necone »

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…

Yeah I'm a little torn on this one. I generally think that much of IP law causes more harm than good, so in the abstract I'm in favor of copyright being weaker. But in this specific case, given the context of existing copyright law and its intent it seems pretty obvious to me that he should have copyright over the photo.

I don't think it's analogous to AI art though - no other humans creative input and therefore livelihood was ever involved in the process, and it's not like monkeys have any use for money or ownership of intellectual property. (Although the hypothetical situation where you assign the monkeys personhood and give them a bunch of royalties to pay for a better habitat and piles of bananas would be pretty cool.)

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

#67

Post by timewizard »

koolala wrote: post #63
intrasight wrote: post #23

What, if any, practical implications does this have? Why would a real person or company want to specify a non real person as an author?

Unlicensed Human Code is 100% copyrighted and closed source. Unlicensed AI Code is 0% copyrighted and open source and can't be closed.

Code that the LLM reproduced without modification from it's ripped off "training set." I literally have no idea what kind of deranged person does not notice this let alone believes that they should profit from it.

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

#68

Post by amanaplanacanal »

golemotron wrote: post #62

This is clearly a case where we need new legislation. The US Copyright Act needed to be amended to cover photography. Prior to that photos were not copyrightable. It seems like we are on the same trajectory now. The real problem is that Congress is institutionally incapable of making simple amendments to law. Everything gets delegated to agency rule making regardless of whether anyone likes the outcome.

And then the supreme court tosses out the agency rulemaking. And then the president makes his own executive order. Then the courts block that. It's kind of a mess right now. Congress is pretty broken.

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

#69

Post by connicpu »

bilbo0s wrote: post #57
jedberg wrote: post #33

I'm not sure how this actually matters. Knowing this ruling exists, why would anyone ever claim an AI created their art without human assistance? Even if the AI created the art just from the prompt, the human still made the prompt. Even if the prompt was "make art". I just don't understand how you could ever have AI art without human intervention. Is there a legal definition of "human intervention" that has some mini…

Pretty sure this wouldn't pass the merit part unless the prompt was unusually long and precise. the human still made the prompt What I can guarantee, is that series of prompts itself would be copyright-able. (The series of prompts that ultimately created the image.) No matter how little they may weigh any one of those prompts in isolation. That is, assuming the EULA of the LLM doesn't require you to essentially place…

Unless you can make your prompt so specific that the AI generates substantially the same image every time you run it, I think you're perpetually vulnerable to the argument that significant decision making was done without human hands and therefore the work is not primarily human created.

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

#70

Post by radlad »

aydyn wrote: post #65
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…

Couldn't the same argument be made for photography? You aren't making the image, the camera is doing all the work.

Try taking photographs like the ones you see in Nat Geo, or museum exhibits, and you'll quickly realize the camera is most definitely NOT doing all the work.
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