6 ms·

That’s one case, not a ruling about all AI generated art. It won’t be the same for every image involving AI in some way. What if you use AI to fill in a portion

by cal85 4y ago

That’s one case, not a ruling about all AI generated art. It won’t be the same for every image involving AI in some way. What if you use AI to fill in a portion of an image, as with Adobe’s content aware fill? What if you use a series of SD steps but with a human selecting outputs and feeding them back in as inputs to get something else the AI could not have come up with on its own? The copyright conversation is only just beginning.

cthalupa 4y ago
>That’s one case, not a ruling about all AI generated art "Because copyright law as codified in the 1976 Act requires human authorship, the Work cannot be registered." The actual ruling (and a similar USPTO discussions) are about AI generated art and talk extensively about it in the broad case. The stance of these organizations is that AI generated art is not copyrightable. I don't disagree that the line is blurred when you discuss content aware fill, where the AI is working on a portion of it, but the current use of SD, even img2img and multiple prompts, etc., quite clearly falls outside of human authorship as recognized by the US Copyright and Patent offices. https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/a-recent-entrance-to-paradise.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/... https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USPTO_AI-Report_2020-10-07.pdf https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USPTO_AI... Might this change in the future? Possibly. But as it stands today, I would not make any plans that assume you can secure the copyright (in the US) to anything made with SD. Edit: Going through and noting that I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, don't listen to some random on the internet for legal advice, get a lawyer if you need it.
- DougBTX 4y ago
  > quite clearly falls outside of human authorship as recognized by the US Copyright and Patent offices. I think these are answering a slightly different question, as they are asking if the AI itself can hold the copyright on the output. A bit like if someone tried to copyright an image and assign “Photoshop” as the author. The question above is maybe closer to asking if the person using an ML model can get copyright on the output, in that case there is a person trying to own the copyright, so I suspect it would not be rejected so easily.
  - cthalupa 4y ago
    >as they are asking if the AI itself can hold the copyright on the output. Who is? The original question I replied to: >If someone runs the model on their own hardware, do they "own" the images generated? This seems to be straightforward - Thaler tried to receive the copyright for the artwork generated by his Creativity Machine. He was denied, because the copyright office does not believe that a neural network generated image has human authorship. From the Copyright office paper: "he [Thaler] was “seeking to register this computer-generated work as a work-for-hire to the owner of the Creativity Machine.”" >A bit like if someone tried to copyright an image and assign “Photoshop” as the author. This is also clearly outside of the scope of copyrightable work per the reasoning given by the copyright office. Both questions are thoroughly answered at this moment unless Thaler wins his appeal. Edit: Going through and noting that I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, don't listen to some random on the internet for legal advice, get a lawyer if you need it.
    - DougBTX 4y ago
      > > as they are asking if the AI itself can hold the copyright on the output. > Who is? Thaler is. I’ve only read the intro sections of the documents you linked to, so I may have missed something more fundamental later, but the key points seem to be: > The author of the Work was identified as the “Creativity Machine,” ... the Work “was autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine” and: > Thaler must either provide evidence that the Work is the product of human authorship or convince the Office to depart from a century of copyright jurisprudence. He has done neither. So in this case they are asking if the AI can be the author. Whereas the question in this thread was: > If someone runs the model on their own hardware, do they "own" the images generated? In that case, a human is providing a prompt to the model (providing creative input), and asking if they themselves count as the author (a human rather than a neural net), so it seems like a significantly different case.
      - cthalupa 4y ago
        Thaler specifically asks for himself to be given the copyright assignment in the filing, claiming that the AI is essentially creating it in a work-for-hire. He does not ask for the Creativity Machine to be assigned the copyright. >In that case, a human is providing a prompt to the model (providing creative input), and asking if they themselves count as the author (a human rather than a neural net), so it seems like a significantly different case. I don't know that I specifically agree with this, but this is probably due to me having read additional articles on similar filings, including one where someone took a photograph, applied a style transfer AI to it, and then tried to copyright the resulting image, and was denied, because the copyright office found that there was not evidence that the work was a product of human authorship. Andres Guadamuz (a lawyer specializing in IP law, senior lecturer at Sussex university, and a proponent of AI generated work being copyrightable) discusses a lot of this in https://www.technollama.co.uk/dall%c2%b7e-goes-commercial-but-what-about-copyright https://www.technollama.co.uk/dall%c2%b7e-goes-commercial-bu... - but the most relevant part to this discussion is "For the most part, the legal consensus appears to be that the images do not have any copyright whatsoever, and that they’re all in the public domain." The user experience for DALL-E, StableDiffusion, Midjourney, etc. are all essentially the same - craft a prompt, fine-tune it, get artwork out, so his discussion should be broadly applicable to all of these similar tools.
- mnahkies 4y ago
  This seems odd, there is still a human authoring the images through the use of prompts etc. How does this differ from using a paint brush?
  - cthalupa 4y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/COPYRIGHT/comments/vshypc/the_us_copyright_office_on_june_29_2022_rejected/ https://www.reddit.com/r/COPYRIGHT/comments/vshypc/the_us_co... talks about a (paywalled) article that discusses this problem. This was a Style Transfer AI - it takes a source image and recreates it in the style of a painter. In this case, the person both took the photo that the style was transferred to, and selected the style and a variety of variables. The US Copyright office still felt that his contribution was not distinguishable from the work that the AI did. I'll note that this is very US specific - there are a lot of counter-examples of other countries allowing for the copyright of work like this, including the EU, UK, Canada, India, etc.

by cal85 4y ago

cthalupa 4y ago

>That’s one case, not a ruling about all AI generated art "Because copyright law as codified in the 1976 Act requires human authorship, the Work cannot be registered." The actual ruling (and a similar USPTO discussions) are about AI generated art and talk extensively about it in the broad case. The stance of these organizations is that AI generated art is not copyrightable. I don't disagree that the line is blurred when you discuss content aware fill, where the AI is working on a portion of it, but the current use of SD, even img2img and multiple prompts, etc., quite clearly falls outside of human authorship as recognized by the US Copyright and Patent offices. https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/a-recent-entrance-to-paradise.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/... https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USPTO_AI-Report_2020-10-07.pdf https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USPTO_AI... Might this change in the future? Possibly. But as it stands today, I would not make any plans that assume you can secure the copyright (in the US) to anything made with SD. Edit: Going through and noting that I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, don't listen to some random on the internet for legal advice, get a lawyer if you need it.

DougBTX 4y ago
> quite clearly falls outside of human authorship as recognized by the US Copyright and Patent offices. I think these are answering a slightly different question, as they are asking if the AI itself can hold the copyright on the output. A bit like if someone tried to copyright an image and assign “Photoshop” as the author. The question above is maybe closer to asking if the person using an ML model can get copyright on the output, in that case there is a person trying to own the copyright, so I suspect it would not be rejected so easily.
- cthalupa 4y ago
  >as they are asking if the AI itself can hold the copyright on the output. Who is? The original question I replied to: >If someone runs the model on their own hardware, do they "own" the images generated? This seems to be straightforward - Thaler tried to receive the copyright for the artwork generated by his Creativity Machine. He was denied, because the copyright office does not believe that a neural network generated image has human authorship. From the Copyright office paper: "he [Thaler] was “seeking to register this computer-generated work as a work-for-hire to the owner of the Creativity Machine.”" >A bit like if someone tried to copyright an image and assign “Photoshop” as the author. This is also clearly outside of the scope of copyrightable work per the reasoning given by the copyright office. Both questions are thoroughly answered at this moment unless Thaler wins his appeal. Edit: Going through and noting that I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, don't listen to some random on the internet for legal advice, get a lawyer if you need it.
  - DougBTX 4y ago
    > > as they are asking if the AI itself can hold the copyright on the output. > Who is? Thaler is. I’ve only read the intro sections of the documents you linked to, so I may have missed something more fundamental later, but the key points seem to be: > The author of the Work was identified as the “Creativity Machine,” ... the Work “was autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine” and: > Thaler must either provide evidence that the Work is the product of human authorship or convince the Office to depart from a century of copyright jurisprudence. He has done neither. So in this case they are asking if the AI can be the author. Whereas the question in this thread was: > If someone runs the model on their own hardware, do they "own" the images generated? In that case, a human is providing a prompt to the model (providing creative input), and asking if they themselves count as the author (a human rather than a neural net), so it seems like a significantly different case.
    - cthalupa 4y ago
      Thaler specifically asks for himself to be given the copyright assignment in the filing, claiming that the AI is essentially creating it in a work-for-hire. He does not ask for the Creativity Machine to be assigned the copyright. >In that case, a human is providing a prompt to the model (providing creative input), and asking if they themselves count as the author (a human rather than a neural net), so it seems like a significantly different case. I don't know that I specifically agree with this, but this is probably due to me having read additional articles on similar filings, including one where someone took a photograph, applied a style transfer AI to it, and then tried to copyright the resulting image, and was denied, because the copyright office found that there was not evidence that the work was a product of human authorship. Andres Guadamuz (a lawyer specializing in IP law, senior lecturer at Sussex university, and a proponent of AI generated work being copyrightable) discusses a lot of this in https://www.technollama.co.uk/dall%c2%b7e-goes-commercial-but-what-about-copyright https://www.technollama.co.uk/dall%c2%b7e-goes-commercial-bu... - but the most relevant part to this discussion is "For the most part, the legal consensus appears to be that the images do not have any copyright whatsoever, and that they’re all in the public domain." The user experience for DALL-E, StableDiffusion, Midjourney, etc. are all essentially the same - craft a prompt, fine-tune it, get artwork out, so his discussion should be broadly applicable to all of these similar tools.
mnahkies 4y ago
This seems odd, there is still a human authoring the images through the use of prompts etc. How does this differ from using a paint brush?
- cthalupa 4y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/COPYRIGHT/comments/vshypc/the_us_copyright_office_on_june_29_2022_rejected/ https://www.reddit.com/r/COPYRIGHT/comments/vshypc/the_us_co... talks about a (paywalled) article that discusses this problem. This was a Style Transfer AI - it takes a source image and recreates it in the style of a painter. In this case, the person both took the photo that the style was transferred to, and selected the style and a variety of variables. The US Copyright office still felt that his contribution was not distinguishable from the work that the AI did. I'll note that this is very US specific - there are a lot of counter-examples of other countries allowing for the copyright of work like this, including the EU, UK, Canada, India, etc.