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> I have come to the conclusion that that almost every work created by an AI tool should be copyrightable, even without the iterative refinement and post-proces

by mjr00 4y ago

> I have come to the conclusion that that almost every work created by an AI tool should be copyrightable, even without the iterative refinement and post-processing that Kris performed. The more I search, the more I see similarities with photography and the long copyright battles over what minimum amount of creativity is needed to support the copyright in a photograph. I think this is shortsighted; this opens up a space for "AI copyright trolls" who generate images for popular prompts in an automated fashion to get copyright, then go after people using AI art who happened to hit the same seed and prompt. Admittedly unlikely, but it could happen, and might eventually even be worth the GPU time depending on how popular AI artwork becomes (and how fast GPUs get). In any case, I don't see why the unaltered, or in this case extremely minorly altered, image output itself should be copyrightable. It's like two people going to Venice Beach to record the waves at the same time. They each have copyright over their specific recordings, but they can't copyright the sounds of the waves itself; the other person is free to do what they want with their own recording of the same sound. The same way that if you generate a Midjourney image with a specific prompt/seed, I should be able to use the same settings to generate the same image and do what I want with it.

gwern 4y ago
> I think this is shortsighted; this opens up a space for "AI copyright trolls" who generate images for popular prompts in an automated fashion to get copyright, then go after people using AI art who happened to hit the same seed and prompt. That seems extremely unlikely to make any sense given that the random seeds in question would be, what, FP32 or FP64 by default? So that's 4 billion random seeds per prompt. Better hope your GPUs are really cheap and you're targeting a really popular prompt+model+everything-else...
- wokwokwok 4y ago
  Yes, but that’s the point isn’t it? Why not copyright them all? Sure, it’s irritating, and troll behaviour; but that’s literally what patent trolls do right?
  - gwern 4y ago
    No, the point is to make money.
rcme 4y ago
The USCO also gave their justification: not enough human input in the process of creation to justify a copyright. After all, what is the point of copyright? To protect the interest of human creators. Human creators get exclusivity on their own ideas in exchange for sharing them with the world. This deal breaks down if there is no effort involved in creating the works.
- jay_kyburz 4y ago
  As a technical artists, dabbling with AI, I can tell you that it takes a lot of time an effort to generate prompts, asses the quality of the generated images, curate collections of images to be in the same art style. I haven't even started trying to work out how to get the same characters in different pictures. If I wanted the look of my product to be "ball point pen on post-it note" it would have been a lot less work and effort and it would get copyright protection. Effort is the wrong measure.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- csnover 4y ago
  > After all, what is the point of copyright? To protect the interest of human creators. Sorry if I’ve missed your point here, but the purpose of copyright in the United States, as written in its constitution, is to promote the progress of science and useful arts[0], not to protect the interests of creators. The exclusive license to creators is a means to an end. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Purpose_of_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...
  - rcme 4y ago
    > The Congress shall have Power [...] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. That sounds like protecting the interests of human creators so they keep creating, to me at least.
aiappreciator 4y ago
Is a photograph of a painting itself copyrighted? Img2img or controlnet can basically do that, in less than 30 seconds. Even as someone extremely pro-AI art, I don't think AI-generated content should have copyright in the usual sense. Every art model was trained on massive amounts of copyrighted data, it would be very hypocritical to suddenly claim strong copyright on the output of AI generated items. I think AI generated copyright should be 'pay-to-register', people can pay say $5 per image to register their image, if they believe it to be valuable enough to be copyrighted. In this sense, its more like trademarks, rather than the automatic moral right of copyright. Your average AI art (which is worthless) will not be copyrighted. The ones with significant amounts of attention, post-editing, and economic value, the AI artist can simply register at the copyright office. The extra funding for the copyright office, will also give them more staffing to deal with the torrential tide of AI-related copyright issues, and encourage them to build a healthy ecosystem where manual art and AI art co-exists.
- VanL 4y ago
  A photo that tries to capture an existing painting as closely as possible is not copyrightable. However, even minor changes (such as changing the tint of the photo) have been found to be enough for copyrightability.
  - aiappreciator 4y ago
    AI is far more productive, and easier in modifying source pictures, than photography. Controlnet is not a mere tint, it can generate 20 artstyle variations of the source image in 30 seconds. No artist will have any income if this those AI outputs are copyrightable without cost. I don't think past-decisions are that important here. There'll definitely be new laws around AI generated content, that set clear standards. Those standards have to consider the social impact of copyright and the livelihood of artists. The whole point of copyright is not some abstract golden moral standard, but something that keeps artists and writers employed. That's why I think pay-for-copyright is the best balance in terms of liberty for AI art but preserving the incomes of traditional artists.
hatsunearu 4y ago
I think someone made an automated database of musical riffs of a certain length--all possible riffs. And put it on a hard drive. AFAIK the opinion was that that doesn't count as copyrightable art.
gnopgnip 4y ago
Copyright doesn't prevent independent creation. Two people can take photos of Venice Beach at the same time, and neither is infringing.

by mjr00 4y ago

gwern 4y ago

> I think this is shortsighted; this opens up a space for "AI copyright trolls" who generate images for popular prompts in an automated fashion to get copyright, then go after people using AI art who happened to hit the same seed and prompt. That seems extremely unlikely to make any sense given that the random seeds in question would be, what, FP32 or FP64 by default? So that's 4 billion random seeds per prompt. Better hope your GPUs are really cheap and you're targeting a really popular prompt+model+everything-else...

wokwokwok 4y ago
Yes, but that’s the point isn’t it? Why not copyright them all? Sure, it’s irritating, and troll behaviour; but that’s literally what patent trolls do right?
- gwern 4y ago
  No, the point is to make money.

rcme 4y ago

The USCO also gave their justification: not enough human input in the process of creation to justify a copyright. After all, what is the point of copyright? To protect the interest of human creators. Human creators get exclusivity on their own ideas in exchange for sharing them with the world. This deal breaks down if there is no effort involved in creating the works.

jay_kyburz 4y ago
As a technical artists, dabbling with AI, I can tell you that it takes a lot of time an effort to generate prompts, asses the quality of the generated images, curate collections of images to be in the same art style. I haven't even started trying to work out how to get the same characters in different pictures. If I wanted the look of my product to be "ball point pen on post-it note" it would have been a lot less work and effort and it would get copyright protection. Effort is the wrong measure.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
csnover 4y ago
> After all, what is the point of copyright? To protect the interest of human creators. Sorry if I’ve missed your point here, but the purpose of copyright in the United States, as written in its constitution, is to promote the progress of science and useful arts[0], not to protect the interests of creators. The exclusive license to creators is a means to an end. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Purpose_of_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...
- rcme 4y ago
  > The Congress shall have Power [...] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. That sounds like protecting the interests of human creators so they keep creating, to me at least.

aiappreciator 4y ago

Is a photograph of a painting itself copyrighted? Img2img or controlnet can basically do that, in less than 30 seconds. Even as someone extremely pro-AI art, I don't think AI-generated content should have copyright in the usual sense. Every art model was trained on massive amounts of copyrighted data, it would be very hypocritical to suddenly claim strong copyright on the output of AI generated items. I think AI generated copyright should be 'pay-to-register', people can pay say $5 per image to register their image, if they believe it to be valuable enough to be copyrighted. In this sense, its more like trademarks, rather than the automatic moral right of copyright. Your average AI art (which is worthless) will not be copyrighted. The ones with significant amounts of attention, post-editing, and economic value, the AI artist can simply register at the copyright office. The extra funding for the copyright office, will also give them more staffing to deal with the torrential tide of AI-related copyright issues, and encourage them to build a healthy ecosystem where manual art and AI art co-exists.

VanL 4y ago
A photo that tries to capture an existing painting as closely as possible is not copyrightable. However, even minor changes (such as changing the tint of the photo) have been found to be enough for copyrightability.
- aiappreciator 4y ago
  AI is far more productive, and easier in modifying source pictures, than photography. Controlnet is not a mere tint, it can generate 20 artstyle variations of the source image in 30 seconds. No artist will have any income if this those AI outputs are copyrightable without cost. I don't think past-decisions are that important here. There'll definitely be new laws around AI generated content, that set clear standards. Those standards have to consider the social impact of copyright and the livelihood of artists. The whole point of copyright is not some abstract golden moral standard, but something that keeps artists and writers employed. That's why I think pay-for-copyright is the best balance in terms of liberty for AI art but preserving the incomes of traditional artists.

hatsunearu 4y ago

I think someone made an automated database of musical riffs of a certain length--all possible riffs. And put it on a hard drive. AFAIK the opinion was that that doesn't count as copyrightable art.

gnopgnip 4y ago

Copyright doesn't prevent independent creation. Two people can take photos of Venice Beach at the same time, and neither is infringing.