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US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted
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Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted
#92This 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…
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 person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright. It doesn't default to me just because I asked for it.
Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 live…
> no other humans creative input and therefore livelihood was ever involved in the process What would be the creative output of an artist who never saw the creative output of other artists? We think too highly of ourselves, as if creativity happens in a clean room and we are the hero-creators of our works from pure brain magic.
Creative input is more than just "an idea" though. It's things like design elements: composition, color, light, line and shape. It's also things like symbolism and metaphor, meaning and intent. It's both a thought process and a physical process, not unlike figuring out the details of a software program, versus the startup idea itself.
For me the question of whether an image created via an off-the-cuff prompt ("create an image of a cat hanging from a limb") is uninteresting, but what about the huge grey area of images that are AI-edited? Or which were composed by a human, but within which all elements were created by an AI (similar to sampling in music, if you will)? Or, that underwent hours of image-prompt cycles (i.e. having an AI, or multiple AIs, iteratively edit an image via prompting)? (edit to add - What if the AI isn't generating the image, but is automating the usage of tools within Photoshop?)
Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait just so i understand it, if a single human creates an AI model and trains it, and then prompts it to create an image, is that considered "human intervention" and does that make that human the author of that image? What if its a group of 5 humans that built the LLM and one of them prompts it? Isn't all AI built by some of group of humans? When is AI treated like its own entity like a monkey versus a tool made by…
I would assume that whomever prompts the AI is the author of the work. Adobe or Dell doesn't get to claim ownership to your work just because they made the tool or computer.
That makes sense to me, and good point about Adobe/Dell.
So then any AI would not create art spontaneously right? It would always require a user to prompt it in some way. So wouldn't it be correct to say that all AI art is actually be authored by a human and as such copyrighted to that human?
Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted
#95I 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…
The scammers will do it anyway and simply claim the logos were all designed by humans.
Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted
#96Good. I think copyright law is in general bad. Nothing should be copyrighted.
Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you buy an expensive camera with expensive lenses, you will be able to take such photos, won't you?
In fact, you can take such photos with a cheap camera and cheap lenses if you are skilled. No, equipment does not make a photograph. (source: I own expensive cameras. Taking good photographs is still hard.)
Time and place matter. Your subject matters. Your composition matters. Your lighting matters. When it's done well, the viewer doesn't realize this.
Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted
#98This 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…
It's worth pointing out that this was just a US Copyright Office ruling. It never went to court[1], where the "expert consensus" is that the photographer would have prevailed. But the value of the handful of photographs was tiny in comparison with the publicity (which was always true) so no one ever went to court to try to prove it.
It's not really clear to me how much this AI case matches though. There seems naively to have been a lot more creative work rigging that specific bit of monkey art than there is in applying a decidedly generic AI image generation tool. That AI is so much more capable as a machine for generating art than a camera is seems to cut strongly against the idea here.
[1] Note that PETA then tried to use this case to drive the converse point, suing on behalf of the monkey who they wanted to hold the copyright. They lost, unsurprisingly.
Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted
#99This 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…
> Trying to assign copyright to an AI is techno-futurist bullshit by trying to give legal presence to a piece of software.
I don't quite get this argument. Companies already have legal personhood and can own copyrights, can't they? So if a company's AI creates a copyrightable artifact, who wouldn't it be intellectual property of the company?
Re: US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted
#100So 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.
I suspect in the future we will have a jury consisting of people who are good at prompting. They will load a model that existed at a given time (e.g. when the "author" claimed they came up with the design), and then try to get similar art by just using prompting. Then a judge checks if the art looks similar, and if the prompts were simple enough.
We could have a similar approach with patents.