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I was expecting this argument. I'm sure they're happy to register copyright on a text you wrote yourself and used your imagination on—a prompt. I agree this ha

by Aachen 4y ago

I was expecting this argument. I'm sure they're happy to register copyright on a text you wrote yourself and used your imagination on—a prompt. I agree this has creative input on the artist's part and can be tricky to get right. Similarly, if you do significant edits to the result, I'd assume this ought to continue to legally function just like photo editing functioned before AI-generated images. They're just saying they're not going to copyright what you didn't actually paint or decide on (like the words in each sentence or how to rhyme them, as in their example).

gwd 4y ago
I think the comparison to photography or electronic music is apt. If you just open up Garage Band and click a couple of times to enable loop "autofill" chords / rhythm, should that be copyrightable? I'd say probably not; but if you spent a bunch of time tweaking and honing all the parameters to get something unique and interesting, I'd say they should. Should the person then only get the copyright on the Garage Band parameters, but not on the resulting output audio? Or consider the amount of creativity that goes into most photographs -- it's often nothing more than deciding to take a picture. And yet you have an implicit copyright on every photograph in your phone, just for having made the decision to pick up your phone and click. Or consider the Copyright Office's comparison to giving instructions to an artist. Yes, if you just said to an artist, "Draw a picture of the Eiffel tower", then the artist should own the copyright. But if you worked closely together with the artist, iterating over dozens of designs and sketches, giving feedback and direction on the creative decisions, then personally I think you should share in the copyright. (Not sure what the law is in this case.) Similarly, if you spend an hour iterating through dozens of prompts to get the output of a generated image exactly the way you want it, then you're an artist and should be able to get a copyright on that image.

by Aachen 4y ago

gwd 4y ago

I think the comparison to photography or electronic music is apt. If you just open up Garage Band and click a couple of times to enable loop "autofill" chords / rhythm, should that be copyrightable? I'd say probably not; but if you spent a bunch of time tweaking and honing all the parameters to get something unique and interesting, I'd say they should. Should the person then only get the copyright on the Garage Band parameters, but not on the resulting output audio? Or consider the amount of creativity that goes into most photographs -- it's often nothing more than deciding to take a picture. And yet you have an implicit copyright on every photograph in your phone, just for having made the decision to pick up your phone and click. Or consider the Copyright Office's comparison to giving instructions to an artist. Yes, if you just said to an artist, "Draw a picture of the Eiffel tower", then the artist should own the copyright. But if you worked closely together with the artist, iterating over dozens of designs and sketches, giving feedback and direction on the creative decisions, then personally I think you should share in the copyright. (Not sure what the law is in this case.) Similarly, if you spend an hour iterating through dozens of prompts to get the output of a generated image exactly the way you want it, then you're an artist and should be able to get a copyright on that image.