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Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

federalregister.gov

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Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#81

Post by mlindner »

ummonk wrote: post #58

The U.S. Copyright Office seems to be living under a rock and completely unaware of how much creative work goes into prompt engineering, as well as selecting the subsequent image and applying variations to it until it meets the human's creative desires.

They state this about the prompt engineering:

> While some prompts may be sufficiently creative to be protected by copyright, that does not mean that material generated from a copyrightable prompt is itself copyrightable.

The prompt is fully copyrightable but the output isn't.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#82

Post by bawolff »

bnj wrote: post #40

It's all well and good that the copyright office deems that protection only applies to the parts of the work where a human was in control of the traditional elements of authorship, and that there is a duty to disclose the use of generative technologies ... but now one can plausibly assert that they are the sole author of a work which was produced by one of these models, and be 100% confident that no one can dispute t…

Being the copyright owner and being the author of something are very different things.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#83

Post by DiscourseFan »

bawolff wrote: post #76
DiscourseFan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be able to copy-write the method by which you generated something, but not the thing generated itself. Although even the former act might be too far, it's like saying that you fooled around with the parameters on a computer for 8 hours before it started working, and now you want to copy-write the operation of the computer: the computer is doing what it was intended to do, you just needed time to figure out…

You cannot copyright the method of doing anything. You might be able to patent it, but that is a different thing. Copyright applies to the end result. Patents apply to methods and mechanisms.

No I understand, by "the method" I meant a written work about how the operation is performed--apologies if that was too vague in my OP--not the literal method itself, as in the example of copy-writing a manual for riding a bike.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#84

Post by mlindner »

Laforet wrote: post #10
hayksaakian wrote: post #4

Seems like a win for artists who oppose generative AI. Now those who use AI to claim a copyright are "put on notice" to clearly disclaim the AI generated portions of their content. It will be interesting to see if Prompts themselves could be copyrighted, since presumably humans came up with the prompts.

Recipes are usually not copyrightable as they are just a list of ingredients and instructions with no room for expression. I wonder if the same argument could be applied to prompts.

They state this in the document as well:

> While some prompts may be sufficiently creative to be protected by copyright, that does not mean that material generated from a copyrightable prompt is itself copyrightable.

It sounds like it would depend on the complexity of your prompt.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#85

Post by randombits0 »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #3

> If a work's traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it. > For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the “traditional elements of authorship” are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user. Based on the Office's un…

Careful! I’ve always felt that, as written, copyright should not apply to most software. Since only creative expressions may be copyrighted and functional expressions are not copyrightable, it’s very hard to match up the copyrightable portions of software with those that are not.

Requiring a declaration of what parts are and are not copyrightable for software would be a major shift in policy and require major changes in software methodology. It’s not a big jump to think that any output of AI of software code output would not be copyrightable, regardless of original origin.

Another example of “Software wants to be free.”

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#87

Post by kube-system »

weavejester wrote: post #79
kube-system wrote: post #8

This is all very sane and consistent with previous opinions on the matter. But it doesn’t answer any tough questions either, like: if an AI model outputs something very close to a training input, does the result infringe on the copyrights of the input work?

> This is all very sane and consistent with previous opinions on the matter. Is that sarcasm?

Not at all. There’s literally nothing in this article that would go against ideas already covered in an introductory lecture in copyright law.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#88

Post by rhino369 »

kube-system wrote: post #8

This is all very sane and consistent with previous opinions on the matter. But it doesn’t answer any tough questions either, like: if an AI model outputs something very close to a training input, does the result infringe on the copyrights of the input work?

I don’t think that question is very tough. It’s almost certainly copyright infringement. The method of copying doesn’t really matter.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#89

Post by kjksf »

bnj wrote: post #40

It's all well and good that the copyright office deems that protection only applies to the parts of the work where a human was in control of the traditional elements of authorship, and that there is a duty to disclose the use of generative technologies ... but now one can plausibly assert that they are the sole author of a work which was produced by one of these models, and be 100% confident that no one can dispute t…

And it doesn't matter because anyone can use the AI to produce thousands of similar images with little effort.

All those tools have randomization so they don't produce the exact same image for the exact same prompt.

The value of an image produced by AI is very low because the cost to produce it is very low.

No point in committing federal fraud by falsely claim you made them.

> no one can dispute that

Of course I can dispute that.

I can even prove you didn't make the AI image by asking you to produce a work of similar quality under supervision.

If all you can do is type AI prompts into a computer, good luck producing an actual painting.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#90

Post by lxe »

JCM9 wrote: post #53

So this effectively destroys any concept of AI digital art for sale. If there’s no way to protect it then there’s really nothing to own. It would be like trying to sell someone public domain content.

As an AI artist who's been selling digital art, it really depends on whether you really care about "protecting" your work. I've seen my stuff stolen all over the place, NFTs minted, etc. Most sites will take the copycats down. Lack of copyright protection doesn't necessarily supersede individual marketplace policies.
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