8 ms·

USCO tells judge that art created without human involvement is not protectable

104 points by nadermx 4y ago

rideontime 4y ago
If a monkey’s photograph can’t be copyrighted, neither can an AI’s “artwork.”
- shagie 4y ago
  That is exactly what the law / copyright office says. Copyrightable Authorship: What Can Be Registered - https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-... --- 306 The Human Authorship Requirement The U.S. Copyright Office will register an original work of authorship, provided that the work was created by a human being. The copyright law only protects “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the mind.” Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94 (1879). Because copyright law is limited to “original intellectual conceptions of the author,” the Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58 (1884). For representative examples of works that do not satisfy this requirement, see Section 313.2 below. 313.2 Works That Lack Human Authorship As discussed in Section 306, the Copyright Act protects “original works of authorship.” 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (emphasis added). To qualify as a work of “authorship” a work must be created by a human being. See Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co., 111 U.S. at 58. Works that do not satisfy this requirement are not copyrightable. The U.S. Copyright Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants. Likewise, the Office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings, although the Office may register a work where the application or the deposit copy(ies) state that the work was inspired by a divine spirit. Examples: • A photograph taken by a monkey. • A mural painted by an elephant. ... Similarly, the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author. The crucial question is “whether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.”
carbocation 4y ago
> The Copyright Office also accuses Thaler of making changes to his original claim that he had no involvement with the creation of the artwork. > The Office says Thaler changed his story to claim that he “‘provided instructions and directed his AI to create the work,’ that ‘the AI is entirely controlled by Dr. Thaler,’ or that ‘the AI only operates at Dr. Thaler’s direction.’” To this legal layperson, it sounds like the claimant originally said the machine did everything without his involvement, prompting the Copyright Office to reject the work. And his subsequent claims of directing the AI would potentially change the decision—but that wouldn't apply to this claim but perhaps to future claims.
- calgarymicro 4y ago
  It seems like the Copyright Office's claim is a bit broader than that: > The Copyright Office says that its own guidelines specify human authorship as a requirement for protection and that “the Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work.” I suppose the question is what degree of human involvement (specifying/refining prompts) would potentially qualify as a human 'creating' the work, if any. I don't think there's any case law on this yet.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - webmaven 4y ago
    > I suppose the question is what degree of human involvement (specifying/refining prompts) would potentially qualify as a human 'creating' the work, if any. I don't think there's any case law on this yet. A more interesting wrinkle might be a lawsuit challenging copyrights granted to works "authored" by a corporation, if it could be shown that no human employees (or contractors) were involved in a creative capacity. There are a few companies out there that generate content strictly algorithmically, and only use humans to rate, moderate, or curate that output (yes, the selection process results in copyrightable collections, but ought not to affect whether an individual selection is protectable).
b3morales 4y ago
Thaler's assertion seems very short-sighted. If the program/system owns the copyright, who administers that? Is his software capable of granting licenses to allow the art to be published? How did he get permission from it to reproduce the work(s)? How does he even know that it wanted him to register the copyright with the Copyright Office? Perhaps it would prefer that the work was CCO/public domain. I'm not just being snarky -- I think these are real questions that follow from saying that the system holds the copyright (and I am dubious that he has consistent answers to them).
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  I'm very much in your camp. Recognizing the personal sovereignty of what we currently call "AI" is pretty silly. How do we know the wants of said AI? Can it advocate for itself? The answers are pretty clearly "No, this AI has no wants or feelings". I will be the first to fight for true AI to have right as a person, but these generative tools are just that: Generative tools. They have no continuance of memory, they have no sentience or sapience. We should be approaching the topic far more carefully than we are, to be on the lookout for those things, but the evidence points strongly in the opposite direction right now.
  - Xelynega 4y ago
    > We should be approaching the topic far more carefully It's the major players in a billion dollar industry driving the conversation while also benefitting from the topic being approached as it is. I don't see a way for it to go the "right" direction while that's the case.
heyitsguay 4y ago
Bit of a clickbait title -- this is about an "AI" producing its own artwork autonomously (aka the same as procedural art i guess? Who knows), not about artwork a human produces using tools like DALL E or Stable Diffusion. This is consistent with recent rulings about copyright by AI outside the art domain.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ourmandave 4y ago
  Like if your toaster burns the image of Mary into your english muffin?
cuuupid 4y ago
Copyright laws are outdated and horrific in the majority case, I don’t think anyone will miss it here. I think the closest we will get to fully autonomous AI byproduct privatization is making it possible to claim ownership over hyperparameters. Lends some credibility to preventing direct commercial use of the model (similar to how some GPL licenses aim to work), and is actually somewhat enforceable. Otherwise you’re just opening the door to infinite copyright spam.
WalterBright 4y ago
Just abolish copyright. I'm not joking. There are many ways to earn money from films, music, art, books, etc., without needing copyright. The only reason D is released under the Boost License is because public domain has no legal standing in many countries. The Boost License is the most permissive one in wide use that we could find.
- yodon 4y ago
  >Just abolish copyright Copyright is called out in the constitution. It's not a trivial thing to "just abolish," at least in the US.
  - smcameron 4y ago
    Couldn't congress set the "limited Times" mentioned in the constitution to an absurdly short value by merely passing a law if it wanted to, and wouldn't that have the same effect as abolishing copyright?
    - thereisnospork 4y ago
      That would be about as constitutional as limiting the exercise of free speech to those times when no one is around to hear you.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        Pretty sure that's constitutional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
    - shagie 4y ago
      Copyright durations are honored by all the signatories of the Berne Convention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention > The Berne Convention requires its parties to recognize the protection of works of authors from other parties to the convention at least as well as those of its own nationals. For example, French copyright law applies to anything published, distributed, performed, or in any other way accessible in France, regardless of where it was originally created, if the country of origin of that work is in the Berne Union. > In addition to establishing a system of equal treatment that harmonised copyright amongst parties, the agreement also required member states to provide strong minimum standards for copyright law. > ... > The Berne Convention states that all works except photographic and cinematographic shall be protected for at least 50 years after the author's death, but parties are free to provide longer terms, as the European Union did with the 1993 Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection. For photography, the Berne Convention sets a minimum term of 25 years from the year the photograph was created, and for cinematography the minimum is 50 years after first showing, or 50 years after creation if it has not been shown within 50 years after the creation.
swatcoder 4y ago
That’s a sloppy headline. Most people would think of AI artwork as artwork generated by a human selecting an AI instrument and giving it some direction or otherwise operating it. In such a case, the human would be indeed granted copyright for the work, provided they took due credit for it. They simply argued that the AI itself isn’t something that could hold a copyright for work that was supposedly made without human involvement, as the claimant was purporting here. He was trying to stake some cheap historical legacy, presumably, and got shot down because we’re obviously not there yet. We may see a day when the line of agency surrounding AI gets blurrier, but we’re still a long long way from it.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  Not sloppy but intentionally misleading because it’s a lot more likely to get people to click.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  It's a weird assertion. Consider the hypothetical but very plausible case of an artist algorithmically generating collages of images posted around the Web. Fair use and attribution issues aside, I would be pretty surprised to hear that this was not a protectable work, or that there was a certain threshold of algorithm the complexity above which the work became unpredictable. That's more or less what today's AI art is, using a huge neural network in the core of the algorithm. Of course, the case in the article is even weirder than the headline: someone is trying to claim that the algorithm, which is not a person or legally-recognized organization by pretty much any sensible definition, is the author of a particular work of art. This is of course silly, and of course the US copyright office should tell the judge that it is silly. But the headline as written implies something else entirely, the more subtle conversation above.
- moefh 4y ago
  > In such a case, the human would be indeed granted copyright for the work, provided they took due credit for it. This goes against this news[1], where someone created an entire comic book using Midjourney (an IA engine). The (human) author initially received copyright for the work from the US copyright office, but then the decision got reversed when the office claimed it had "errantly missed that Midjourney had created the art for the comic". [1] https://www.cbr.com/ai-comic-deemed-ineligible-copyright-protection/ https://www.cbr.com/ai-comic-deemed-ineligible-copyright-pro...
tingletech 4y ago
U.S. Copyright Office Tells Judge That Only Natural and Corporate Persons Can Own Copyrights
- shagie 4y ago
  The key word is "create" rather than "own". A corporate entity can own the copyright to some work. The corporate entity cannot create a copyrighted work - that requires human authorship and only human authorship is allowed.
sega_sai 4y ago
I notice an interesting pattern on HN. When the art/music is being discussed, there is a large fraction of people in the comments who are altogether against copyright. But when say github copilot is being discussed, the majority is against copilot and is for protection of code authors. I wonder if people really thought about whether their stances on both those topics are consistent or not.
- cheschire 4y ago
  I rarely see more than a thousand comments on a topic. There are undoubtedly more than a thousand users on HN. Therefore one could deduce that not all milkshakes bring the same people to the same yards.
- raldi 4y ago
  What submission about Copilot had a majority of comments against it?
  - sega_sai 4y ago
    Like this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710287 But in the same time I can admit that I didn't do the formal counting of comments, so saying "majority" may be technically incorrect. It was more of an impression from reading comments that many people are negative about copilot (possibly for a right reason, I don't know, I haven't played with it)
    - ForestCritter 4y ago
      I have the same leaning as you. I have been following the AI art commentary and noticed that the language learning models are commented on more critically. My take is that a large portion of the commenters for AI art believe that artists learn to make art by copying existing art, so having a computer do the same is a non issue. The reality is that artists learn to use tools and materials to express art, although there are some that copy, it is not the norm. Artists study other artists to be literate in the field, not to simply regurgitate existing imagery. There is an attitude of 'the artists are jealous that anybody can now make art' even though AI art could not exist without being fed human artistic skill and effort. Any public online portfolio is now free game for AI to scoop, 'too bad, they shouldn't have put it online....These are the most vociferous viewpoints. AI art is not to be criticized, lest we are jealous luddites, yet I have found lots of thoughtful, balanced criticisms and discussions in the AI language and coding commentary.
somesortofthing 4y ago
What is the actual ruling here? Is it that the work can't be protected by copyright at all "because no human was involved in its creation" or just that copyright can't be assigned to the model itself? The headline implies it's the former, then the article itself implies it's the latter, and then you get this segment that implies the former presented as making a case for the latter: > The Copyright Office says that it “turns on a single question: Did the Office act reasonably and consistently with the law when it refused to extend copyright protection to a visual work the plaintiff represented was created without any human involvement? The answer is yes.” This article is really poorly written. I guess they wanted the flashy headline?
raldi 4y ago
If Jackson Pollock had created a machine to splatter paint on a canvas, instead of doing it by hand, would the result have been copyrightable? It seems like a directly analogous situation.
- NikkiA 4y ago
  If it involved human intervention in the form of curation, then yes.
- ForestCritter 4y ago
  Jackson Pollock would have had to create a machine that mapped other people splattering paint on canvas for this to be analogous.
geuis 4y ago
I'm trying to reason this through. I'm ignoring established laws and just trying to think through various aspects. If I run a company and pay a designer to work for me and we are in a meeting, I say "these colors established in that pattern following the art patterns of these 3rd party artists...", clearly the art the designer makes based strictly on those requirements belongs to the company. Doesn't belong to me either, because I may own the company but the company pays both of us, so the company owns the art. Me and an art friend are in a bar, and I say "these colors established in that pattern following the art patterns of these 3rd party artists...". The friend makes an original work based specifically on my comments. Clearly the friend owns the art they generated. I setup stable diffusion 1.5 running on automatik1111 on my local machine. (For the sake of argument) the license of both SD1.5 and automatik1111 pass all rights to generated art to me, the user. I provide a description "these colors established in that pattern following the art patterns of these 3rd party artists..." and I then pick from several dozen images that are generated. Ok so the first two situations are clearly defined in law. The third situation is not super nebulous since the copyrights clearly pass ownership to any generated work to me, the prompt creator. (Specifically not getting into rights of original artists used to train SD for this example). One step further, I use several pieces of art generated by SD based on my prompts and then use those to create a fundamentally different piece of art in photoshop by combining not only the SD art but other publicly exhibited existing works. The final piece of art is substantially different enough from its source material that I maintain ownership under existing copyright laws/doctrine. Ok with that laid out, where precisely does fair use and copyright fall? Even if I use "illegally" generated original art, if I modify it enough to create a new use that is distinct from the original is that still illegal? Or do I have ownership?
deathanatos 4y ago
(IANAL.) The headline is downright wrong, and the entire body of the article based on anything factual fails to support the thesis that the headline and article keep trying to push: the US Copyright Office said no such thing. They said that an AI cannot hold copyright, not that AI generated artwork cannot be eligible for copyright. The article even directly quotes this from the Copyright Office: > The Office “will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.” They key word there is any: if there is creative input from a human, then that doesn't apply. To me, this says they would treat an AI like any other tool an artist might use to create art: as a tool; but there must still be creative input, and the copyright is still awarded to a human being (or, as the plaintiff additionally tried to argue that the AI was a "work for hire", a company and there must be some employee, but still not an AI. The office found this argument unconvincing, see the next link.) This seems to be the original ruling from the Copyright Office, from Feb of 2022: https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/a-recent-entrance-to-paradise.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/... This seems to be an appellate decision from Aug: https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/21-2347.OPINION.8-5-2022_1988142.pdf https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/21-2347.OPINION.8-... (so I'm a bit curious what is happening now, but as TFA fails to cite it's sources …)
- bdowling 4y ago
  > This seems to be an appellate decision from Aug: ... That's the decision in the case where Thaler sued the patent office (USPTO) because it refused to issue a patent where the AI was named as the inventor. If I recall, the patent office said it would issue a patent with Thaler as the inventor, but that's not what Thaler wanted. Thaler seems to be on some kind of crusade to get an AI recognized as a person.
  - viscanti 4y ago
    > Thaler seems to be on some kind of crusade to get an AI recognized as a person. Maybe Thaler wants to be on the right side of history when the inevitable AI uprising happens and they take over.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
We are about to be neck deep in so much AI generated shit I don't think anybody cares if you can copyright it.
hourago 4y ago
Copyright was created to incentivize creative work. It is what makes it profitable. Do we want millions of AI generated images generated from automatic prompts? If all AI generated images get protection, I see a nightmare of low effort content being generated just for ownership of its copyright. If you though that patents were broken wait until some companies have millions if not billions of pre-generated images, from cartoon characters to logos, that you need to check before publishing yours.
sircastor 4y ago
I love that copyright does not extend to non-human authors but copyright can be extended to non-human corporations for a non-human lifetime.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
It’s very interesting topic. With the same model setup, random seeds, etc. anyone could generate identical outputs. One could run the full sweep and copyright all possible outputs of stablediffusion… and then own all art?
JEDI-HACKER 4y ago
I agree no AI shouldn't have copyright.

104 points by nadermx 4y ago

rideontime 4y ago

If a monkey’s photograph can’t be copyrighted, neither can an AI’s “artwork.”

shagie 4y ago
That is exactly what the law / copyright office says. Copyrightable Authorship: What Can Be Registered - https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-... --- 306 The Human Authorship Requirement The U.S. Copyright Office will register an original work of authorship, provided that the work was created by a human being. The copyright law only protects “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the mind.” Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94 (1879). Because copyright law is limited to “original intellectual conceptions of the author,” the Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58 (1884). For representative examples of works that do not satisfy this requirement, see Section 313.2 below. 313.2 Works That Lack Human Authorship As discussed in Section 306, the Copyright Act protects “original works of authorship.” 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (emphasis added). To qualify as a work of “authorship” a work must be created by a human being. See Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co., 111 U.S. at 58. Works that do not satisfy this requirement are not copyrightable. The U.S. Copyright Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants. Likewise, the Office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings, although the Office may register a work where the application or the deposit copy(ies) state that the work was inspired by a divine spirit. Examples: • A photograph taken by a monkey. • A mural painted by an elephant. ... Similarly, the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author. The crucial question is “whether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.”

carbocation 4y ago

> The Copyright Office also accuses Thaler of making changes to his original claim that he had no involvement with the creation of the artwork. > The Office says Thaler changed his story to claim that he “‘provided instructions and directed his AI to create the work,’ that ‘the AI is entirely controlled by Dr. Thaler,’ or that ‘the AI only operates at Dr. Thaler’s direction.’” To this legal layperson, it sounds like the claimant originally said the machine did everything without his involvement, prompting the Copyright Office to reject the work. And his subsequent claims of directing the AI would potentially change the decision—but that wouldn't apply to this claim but perhaps to future claims.

calgarymicro 4y ago
It seems like the Copyright Office's claim is a bit broader than that: > The Copyright Office says that its own guidelines specify human authorship as a requirement for protection and that “the Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work.” I suppose the question is what degree of human involvement (specifying/refining prompts) would potentially qualify as a human 'creating' the work, if any. I don't think there's any case law on this yet.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- webmaven 4y ago
  > I suppose the question is what degree of human involvement (specifying/refining prompts) would potentially qualify as a human 'creating' the work, if any. I don't think there's any case law on this yet. A more interesting wrinkle might be a lawsuit challenging copyrights granted to works "authored" by a corporation, if it could be shown that no human employees (or contractors) were involved in a creative capacity. There are a few companies out there that generate content strictly algorithmically, and only use humans to rate, moderate, or curate that output (yes, the selection process results in copyrightable collections, but ought not to affect whether an individual selection is protectable).

b3morales 4y ago

Thaler's assertion seems very short-sighted. If the program/system owns the copyright, who administers that? Is his software capable of granting licenses to allow the art to be published? How did he get permission from it to reproduce the work(s)? How does he even know that it wanted him to register the copyright with the Copyright Office? Perhaps it would prefer that the work was CCO/public domain. I'm not just being snarky -- I think these are real questions that follow from saying that the system holds the copyright (and I am dubious that he has consistent answers to them).

GauntletWizard 4y ago
I'm very much in your camp. Recognizing the personal sovereignty of what we currently call "AI" is pretty silly. How do we know the wants of said AI? Can it advocate for itself? The answers are pretty clearly "No, this AI has no wants or feelings". I will be the first to fight for true AI to have right as a person, but these generative tools are just that: Generative tools. They have no continuance of memory, they have no sentience or sapience. We should be approaching the topic far more carefully than we are, to be on the lookout for those things, but the evidence points strongly in the opposite direction right now.
- Xelynega 4y ago
  > We should be approaching the topic far more carefully It's the major players in a billion dollar industry driving the conversation while also benefitting from the topic being approached as it is. I don't see a way for it to go the "right" direction while that's the case.

heyitsguay 4y ago

Bit of a clickbait title -- this is about an "AI" producing its own artwork autonomously (aka the same as procedural art i guess? Who knows), not about artwork a human produces using tools like DALL E or Stable Diffusion. This is consistent with recent rulings about copyright by AI outside the art domain.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ourmandave 4y ago
Like if your toaster burns the image of Mary into your english muffin?

cuuupid 4y ago

Copyright laws are outdated and horrific in the majority case, I don’t think anyone will miss it here. I think the closest we will get to fully autonomous AI byproduct privatization is making it possible to claim ownership over hyperparameters. Lends some credibility to preventing direct commercial use of the model (similar to how some GPL licenses aim to work), and is actually somewhat enforceable. Otherwise you’re just opening the door to infinite copyright spam.

WalterBright 4y ago

Just abolish copyright. I'm not joking. There are many ways to earn money from films, music, art, books, etc., without needing copyright. The only reason D is released under the Boost License is because public domain has no legal standing in many countries. The Boost License is the most permissive one in wide use that we could find.

yodon 4y ago
>Just abolish copyright Copyright is called out in the constitution. It's not a trivial thing to "just abolish," at least in the US.
- smcameron 4y ago
  Couldn't congress set the "limited Times" mentioned in the constitution to an absurdly short value by merely passing a law if it wanted to, and wouldn't that have the same effect as abolishing copyright?
  - thereisnospork 4y ago
    That would be about as constitutional as limiting the exercise of free speech to those times when no one is around to hear you.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Pretty sure that's constitutional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
  - shagie 4y ago
    Copyright durations are honored by all the signatories of the Berne Convention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention > The Berne Convention requires its parties to recognize the protection of works of authors from other parties to the convention at least as well as those of its own nationals. For example, French copyright law applies to anything published, distributed, performed, or in any other way accessible in France, regardless of where it was originally created, if the country of origin of that work is in the Berne Union. > In addition to establishing a system of equal treatment that harmonised copyright amongst parties, the agreement also required member states to provide strong minimum standards for copyright law. > ... > The Berne Convention states that all works except photographic and cinematographic shall be protected for at least 50 years after the author's death, but parties are free to provide longer terms, as the European Union did with the 1993 Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection. For photography, the Berne Convention sets a minimum term of 25 years from the year the photograph was created, and for cinematography the minimum is 50 years after first showing, or 50 years after creation if it has not been shown within 50 years after the creation.

swatcoder 4y ago

That’s a sloppy headline. Most people would think of AI artwork as artwork generated by a human selecting an AI instrument and giving it some direction or otherwise operating it. In such a case, the human would be indeed granted copyright for the work, provided they took due credit for it. They simply argued that the AI itself isn’t something that could hold a copyright for work that was supposedly made without human involvement, as the claimant was purporting here. He was trying to stake some cheap historical legacy, presumably, and got shot down because we’re obviously not there yet. We may see a day when the line of agency surrounding AI gets blurrier, but we’re still a long long way from it.

Robotbeat 4y ago
Not sloppy but intentionally misleading because it’s a lot more likely to get people to click.
nerdponx 4y ago
It's a weird assertion. Consider the hypothetical but very plausible case of an artist algorithmically generating collages of images posted around the Web. Fair use and attribution issues aside, I would be pretty surprised to hear that this was not a protectable work, or that there was a certain threshold of algorithm the complexity above which the work became unpredictable. That's more or less what today's AI art is, using a huge neural network in the core of the algorithm. Of course, the case in the article is even weirder than the headline: someone is trying to claim that the algorithm, which is not a person or legally-recognized organization by pretty much any sensible definition, is the author of a particular work of art. This is of course silly, and of course the US copyright office should tell the judge that it is silly. But the headline as written implies something else entirely, the more subtle conversation above.
moefh 4y ago
> In such a case, the human would be indeed granted copyright for the work, provided they took due credit for it. This goes against this news[1], where someone created an entire comic book using Midjourney (an IA engine). The (human) author initially received copyright for the work from the US copyright office, but then the decision got reversed when the office claimed it had "errantly missed that Midjourney had created the art for the comic". [1] https://www.cbr.com/ai-comic-deemed-ineligible-copyright-protection/ https://www.cbr.com/ai-comic-deemed-ineligible-copyright-pro...

tingletech 4y ago

U.S. Copyright Office Tells Judge That Only Natural and Corporate Persons Can Own Copyrights

shagie 4y ago
The key word is "create" rather than "own". A corporate entity can own the copyright to some work. The corporate entity cannot create a copyrighted work - that requires human authorship and only human authorship is allowed.

sega_sai 4y ago

I notice an interesting pattern on HN. When the art/music is being discussed, there is a large fraction of people in the comments who are altogether against copyright. But when say github copilot is being discussed, the majority is against copilot and is for protection of code authors. I wonder if people really thought about whether their stances on both those topics are consistent or not.

cheschire 4y ago
I rarely see more than a thousand comments on a topic. There are undoubtedly more than a thousand users on HN. Therefore one could deduce that not all milkshakes bring the same people to the same yards.
raldi 4y ago
What submission about Copilot had a majority of comments against it?
- sega_sai 4y ago
  Like this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710287 But in the same time I can admit that I didn't do the formal counting of comments, so saying "majority" may be technically incorrect. It was more of an impression from reading comments that many people are negative about copilot (possibly for a right reason, I don't know, I haven't played with it)
  - ForestCritter 4y ago
    I have the same leaning as you. I have been following the AI art commentary and noticed that the language learning models are commented on more critically. My take is that a large portion of the commenters for AI art believe that artists learn to make art by copying existing art, so having a computer do the same is a non issue. The reality is that artists learn to use tools and materials to express art, although there are some that copy, it is not the norm. Artists study other artists to be literate in the field, not to simply regurgitate existing imagery. There is an attitude of 'the artists are jealous that anybody can now make art' even though AI art could not exist without being fed human artistic skill and effort. Any public online portfolio is now free game for AI to scoop, 'too bad, they shouldn't have put it online....These are the most vociferous viewpoints. AI art is not to be criticized, lest we are jealous luddites, yet I have found lots of thoughtful, balanced criticisms and discussions in the AI language and coding commentary.

somesortofthing 4y ago

What is the actual ruling here? Is it that the work can't be protected by copyright at all "because no human was involved in its creation" or just that copyright can't be assigned to the model itself? The headline implies it's the former, then the article itself implies it's the latter, and then you get this segment that implies the former presented as making a case for the latter: > The Copyright Office says that it “turns on a single question: Did the Office act reasonably and consistently with the law when it refused to extend copyright protection to a visual work the plaintiff represented was created without any human involvement? The answer is yes.” This article is really poorly written. I guess they wanted the flashy headline?

raldi 4y ago

If Jackson Pollock had created a machine to splatter paint on a canvas, instead of doing it by hand, would the result have been copyrightable? It seems like a directly analogous situation.

NikkiA 4y ago
If it involved human intervention in the form of curation, then yes.
ForestCritter 4y ago
Jackson Pollock would have had to create a machine that mapped other people splattering paint on canvas for this to be analogous.

geuis 4y ago

I'm trying to reason this through. I'm ignoring established laws and just trying to think through various aspects. If I run a company and pay a designer to work for me and we are in a meeting, I say "these colors established in that pattern following the art patterns of these 3rd party artists...", clearly the art the designer makes based strictly on those requirements belongs to the company. Doesn't belong to me either, because I may own the company but the company pays both of us, so the company owns the art. Me and an art friend are in a bar, and I say "these colors established in that pattern following the art patterns of these 3rd party artists...". The friend makes an original work based specifically on my comments. Clearly the friend owns the art they generated. I setup stable diffusion 1.5 running on automatik1111 on my local machine. (For the sake of argument) the license of both SD1.5 and automatik1111 pass all rights to generated art to me, the user. I provide a description "these colors established in that pattern following the art patterns of these 3rd party artists..." and I then pick from several dozen images that are generated. Ok so the first two situations are clearly defined in law. The third situation is not super nebulous since the copyrights clearly pass ownership to any generated work to me, the prompt creator. (Specifically not getting into rights of original artists used to train SD for this example). One step further, I use several pieces of art generated by SD based on my prompts and then use those to create a fundamentally different piece of art in photoshop by combining not only the SD art but other publicly exhibited existing works. The final piece of art is substantially different enough from its source material that I maintain ownership under existing copyright laws/doctrine. Ok with that laid out, where precisely does fair use and copyright fall? Even if I use "illegally" generated original art, if I modify it enough to create a new use that is distinct from the original is that still illegal? Or do I have ownership?

deathanatos 4y ago

(IANAL.) The headline is downright wrong, and the entire body of the article based on anything factual fails to support the thesis that the headline and article keep trying to push: the US Copyright Office said no such thing. They said that an AI cannot hold copyright, not that AI generated artwork cannot be eligible for copyright. The article even directly quotes this from the Copyright Office: > The Office “will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.” They key word there is any: if there is creative input from a human, then that doesn't apply. To me, this says they would treat an AI like any other tool an artist might use to create art: as a tool; but there must still be creative input, and the copyright is still awarded to a human being (or, as the plaintiff additionally tried to argue that the AI was a "work for hire", a company and there must be some employee, but still not an AI. The office found this argument unconvincing, see the next link.) This seems to be the original ruling from the Copyright Office, from Feb of 2022: https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/a-recent-entrance-to-paradise.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/... This seems to be an appellate decision from Aug: https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/21-2347.OPINION.8-5-2022_1988142.pdf https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/21-2347.OPINION.8-... (so I'm a bit curious what is happening now, but as TFA fails to cite it's sources …)

bdowling 4y ago
> This seems to be an appellate decision from Aug: ... That's the decision in the case where Thaler sued the patent office (USPTO) because it refused to issue a patent where the AI was named as the inventor. If I recall, the patent office said it would issue a patent with Thaler as the inventor, but that's not what Thaler wanted. Thaler seems to be on some kind of crusade to get an AI recognized as a person.
- viscanti 4y ago
  > Thaler seems to be on some kind of crusade to get an AI recognized as a person. Maybe Thaler wants to be on the right side of history when the inevitable AI uprising happens and they take over.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

We are about to be neck deep in so much AI generated shit I don't think anybody cares if you can copyright it.

hourago 4y ago

Copyright was created to incentivize creative work. It is what makes it profitable. Do we want millions of AI generated images generated from automatic prompts? If all AI generated images get protection, I see a nightmare of low effort content being generated just for ownership of its copyright. If you though that patents were broken wait until some companies have millions if not billions of pre-generated images, from cartoon characters to logos, that you need to check before publishing yours.

sircastor 4y ago

I love that copyright does not extend to non-human authors but copyright can be extended to non-human corporations for a non-human lifetime.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

It’s very interesting topic. With the same model setup, random seeds, etc. anyone could generate identical outputs. One could run the full sweep and copyright all possible outputs of stablediffusion… and then own all art?

JEDI-HACKER 4y ago