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Do you have citations for a ruling that AI generated art is not copyrightable? To my knowledge, such a ruling has not been made, so we can at best make wild gue

Do you have citations for a ruling that AI generated art is not copyrightable? To my knowledge, such a ruling has not been made, so we can at best make wild guesses at what the courts will find. I don't think this particular wild guess is on the right track; the creative input given to the AI generator was the prompt. There is also an argument to be made that, in the same sense a photograph can be copyrighted even though it's just a single still image from a moment that occurred around it, an Ai-generated artwork can be copyrighted because the artist performed the creative act of retaining it. In essence, they pulled it from the soup of possible outputs and held it up as one worth noting, as a photographer pulls an image from the soup of possible moments and framings.

ROTMetro 4y ago
But the photographer took the picture, determined the framing and composition. A copyright owner for AI would be claiming to own their contribution, the prompt, but not the automated machine generated portion, the image. Their pulling it from a pile is not an act of creation, and therefore does not qualify. You have to CREATE a work, not critique/currate it. At best you have an 'anonymous work' by Title 17. An “anonymous work” is a work on the copies or phonorecords of which no natural person is identified as author. The fact that it is a curated 'anonymous work' does not make it somehow more copyrightable.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  The picture was there in electromagnetic flux; the photographer just got in the way of the photons. I think a similar argument can be made that in the infinite space of stable diffusion solutions, asking for one is just getting in the way of the noise. If a photograph is art, a human saying "this shook noise is worth showing people" is art. Does the equation of copyright change if the artist says "I want a boat on a calm sea" and starts from a white triangle and blue rectangle? If not, there must be some point of human contribution of information between "words into the stable diffuser" and "using Photoshop on a canvas starting blank" where the work becomes copyrightable. Where is the line? > A copyright owner for AI would be claiming to own their contribution, the prompt, but not the automated machine generated portion, the image. If I take a blank canvas, set color to [200, 10, 10], and click in the corner with the paint bucket, my contribution is five parcels of information (compressible to one, the color), and I get to claim copyright on the whole ruddy square that results. Especially if I name it "Ruddy Square" and sell it to the MoMA.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Maybe. Everything from back when I was a real person and dealt with copyright, patent, and trademark lawyers tells me otherwise, but I know this from the tech industry side/tech industry lawyers and not art specifically. My reading of Title 17 tells me otherwise. But maybe you are right. And maybe museum/gallery owners actually own the copyright of the works they 'find' and display, especially if the gallery gave the artists 'prompts' for what they wanted the art to contain. In your case, you would not be able to copyright that piece of art. You can't own colors or dimensions. You could copyright an installation of the art piece, so that no one else could display a [200,10,10] colored piece of art with the same dimensions you used and call their installation 'Ruddy Square', but that is the only copy protection you would be given.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      > And maybe museum/gallery owners actually own the copyright of the works they 'find' and display, especially if the gallery gave the artists 'prompts' for what they wanted the art to contain. In general, not if those prompts were given to a human who does the actual work. Unless that human was contracted under a work-for-hire agreement, in which case absolutely yes. > You can't own colors or dimensions Interesting. I was mistaken and in the specific case of a square of a particular color, you are quite right. https://www.owe.com/resources/legalities/legalities-15-is-a-shape-copyrightable-how-to-get-appropriate-rights-when-you-commission-graphic-design/ https://www.owe.com/resources/legalities/legalities-15-is-a-... This surprises me because I've observed you can own zero volume for a duration in the music space. I'm not sure why the visual space would differ, but the interpretation of copyright is extremely path-dependent law so I shuldn't be surprised if they do. https://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/ https://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/ That having been said, I suspect that while simple shapes are not copyrightable because they fail a uniqueness and common-usage test, the output of a stable diffusion run does not fail such a test, being a unique artifact that has never been seen before.
      - ROTMetro 4y ago
        The creator would still own the copyright and have to assign it to the person that hired them. It's that same as when us software engineers get our names on patents and then assign them to our employers. I'm surprised more people in HN are not familiar with how intellectual property rights work.

ROTMetro 4y ago

But the photographer took the picture, determined the framing and composition. A copyright owner for AI would be claiming to own their contribution, the prompt, but not the automated machine generated portion, the image. Their pulling it from a pile is not an act of creation, and therefore does not qualify. You have to CREATE a work, not critique/currate it. At best you have an 'anonymous work' by Title 17. An “anonymous work” is a work on the copies or phonorecords of which no natural person is identified as author. The fact that it is a curated 'anonymous work' does not make it somehow more copyrightable.

shadowgovt 4y ago
The picture was there in electromagnetic flux; the photographer just got in the way of the photons. I think a similar argument can be made that in the infinite space of stable diffusion solutions, asking for one is just getting in the way of the noise. If a photograph is art, a human saying "this shook noise is worth showing people" is art. Does the equation of copyright change if the artist says "I want a boat on a calm sea" and starts from a white triangle and blue rectangle? If not, there must be some point of human contribution of information between "words into the stable diffuser" and "using Photoshop on a canvas starting blank" where the work becomes copyrightable. Where is the line? > A copyright owner for AI would be claiming to own their contribution, the prompt, but not the automated machine generated portion, the image. If I take a blank canvas, set color to [200, 10, 10], and click in the corner with the paint bucket, my contribution is five parcels of information (compressible to one, the color), and I get to claim copyright on the whole ruddy square that results. Especially if I name it "Ruddy Square" and sell it to the MoMA.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Maybe. Everything from back when I was a real person and dealt with copyright, patent, and trademark lawyers tells me otherwise, but I know this from the tech industry side/tech industry lawyers and not art specifically. My reading of Title 17 tells me otherwise. But maybe you are right. And maybe museum/gallery owners actually own the copyright of the works they 'find' and display, especially if the gallery gave the artists 'prompts' for what they wanted the art to contain. In your case, you would not be able to copyright that piece of art. You can't own colors or dimensions. You could copyright an installation of the art piece, so that no one else could display a [200,10,10] colored piece of art with the same dimensions you used and call their installation 'Ruddy Square', but that is the only copy protection you would be given.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    > And maybe museum/gallery owners actually own the copyright of the works they 'find' and display, especially if the gallery gave the artists 'prompts' for what they wanted the art to contain. In general, not if those prompts were given to a human who does the actual work. Unless that human was contracted under a work-for-hire agreement, in which case absolutely yes. > You can't own colors or dimensions Interesting. I was mistaken and in the specific case of a square of a particular color, you are quite right. https://www.owe.com/resources/legalities/legalities-15-is-a-shape-copyrightable-how-to-get-appropriate-rights-when-you-commission-graphic-design/ https://www.owe.com/resources/legalities/legalities-15-is-a-... This surprises me because I've observed you can own zero volume for a duration in the music space. I'm not sure why the visual space would differ, but the interpretation of copyright is extremely path-dependent law so I shuldn't be surprised if they do. https://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/ https://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/ That having been said, I suspect that while simple shapes are not copyrightable because they fail a uniqueness and common-usage test, the output of a stable diffusion run does not fail such a test, being a unique artifact that has never been seen before.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      The creator would still own the copyright and have to assign it to the person that hired them. It's that same as when us software engineers get our names on patents and then assign them to our employers. I'm surprised more people in HN are not familiar with how intellectual property rights work.