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> Outputs from LLMs, machine generated art, and machine generated music probably are not copyrightable either. I don't have a strong sense of whether this is r

> Outputs from LLMs, machine generated art, and machine generated music probably are not copyrightable either. I don't have a strong sense of whether this is reasonable (I see arguments both ways) but I do think it's pretty strongly at odds with how we treat photographs. There are a bunch of photos on my phone where I unquestionably own the copyright, despite putting in much less creativity than I did for some AI images I've generated. I don't think it's clear how to resolve this, but I do think that if we are going to protect photos and not prompted AI images, the distinction needs to turn on something other than whether "sufficient creativity" was applied to the input of the mechanical system. Edited to add: It's probably also worth calling out that the question of whether we protect the work produced by a person's use of mechanical system is a separate one from whether we protect the work of others when it is (in various ways, to various degrees, with various likelihoods) reproduced by use of those mechanical systems.

makeitdouble 3y ago
On photography, the argument was condensed into "who pushed the button". We saw it with the monkey auto-portrait copyright fight where copyright was not granted to the photographer, and other nature photography using photo traps where the copyright stuck with the human basically because they were the last operator of the camera. The interesting part is, those controversial case are pretty recent when the art of photography is century(ies?) old now. I wouldn't expect super clear guidelines regarding AI art before a few decades of weird cases fought tooth and nails in court.
- tokai 3y ago
  Eh? The copyright was the photographers and not the monkeys. https://petapixel.com/2018/04/24/photographer-wins-monkey-selfie-copyright-case-court-slams-peta/ https://petapixel.com/2018/04/24/photographer-wins-monkey-se...
  - shagie 3y ago
    You'll still face an uphill battle. https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-... 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.” U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE, REPORT TO THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS BY THE REGISTER OF COPYRIGHTS 5 (1966).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    There was two different arguments: - whether the monkey has the copyright (PETA's argument): this was smacked down by the court twice, the second court explicitely setting a precedent. - whether the photograph has coypright: as far as I know he doesn't, as the work was deemed non copyrightable (ruled as not created by a human) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
kromem 3y ago
Your prompt for the AI image generation is copyrightable. The output is not. The photo you take involved choices of composition and timing and equipment choice. Just because you don't feel you put in a lot of consideration does not mean at a fundamental level that you still put in creative choices that give the resulting product copyright protection. But if you took that photo and put it into software which made a derivative image without human creativity, then while the original image would be copyrightable the resulting derivative output would not. The ideal path forward in copyright would be no infringement in use of materials for training and no protection in AI output with infringement possible against output too close/derivative of protected images. It's not infringement if you learned to draw tracing Mickey Mouse, your Gerry Gerbil cartoons are fine, but if you draw Mickey Mouse and distribute it, you'll hear from Disney's lawyers. AI should be the same with the exception that the Gerry Gerbil cartoons would not be copyrightable.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  > then while the original image would be copyrightable the resulting derivative output would not. Excellent! I'll put the Inheritance Cycle through a synonymiser, and have a copyright-free (if somewhat degraded) version. Take that, Christopher Paolini! … wait. What you say might well be correct: the law is often foolish. But I'd imagine the creativity-free derivative work still counts as a derivative work of the original, copyright-eligible work.
  - chottocharaii 3y ago
    Yes it'd be a derivative work owned by Paolini. Paolini would have copyright to the derivative work, to the extent that he has rights over derivative material. However, the prompter would have nothing
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      If I write a poem and put it into Stable Diffusion, how is what is produced not a derivative work of my poem? We can argue that it's a derivative work of many other things, but that doesn't make it not a derivative work of the poem. One way it might not be is if Stable Diffusion is seem more like a hash algorithm than a synonymiser. But I don't see why it should, because there's a meaningful correspondence between the input and the output of the system.

makeitdouble 3y ago

On photography, the argument was condensed into "who pushed the button". We saw it with the monkey auto-portrait copyright fight where copyright was not granted to the photographer, and other nature photography using photo traps where the copyright stuck with the human basically because they were the last operator of the camera. The interesting part is, those controversial case are pretty recent when the art of photography is century(ies?) old now. I wouldn't expect super clear guidelines regarding AI art before a few decades of weird cases fought tooth and nails in court.

tokai 3y ago
Eh? The copyright was the photographers and not the monkeys. https://petapixel.com/2018/04/24/photographer-wins-monkey-selfie-copyright-case-court-slams-peta/ https://petapixel.com/2018/04/24/photographer-wins-monkey-se...
- shagie 3y ago
  You'll still face an uphill battle. https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-... 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.” U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE, REPORT TO THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS BY THE REGISTER OF COPYRIGHTS 5 (1966).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  There was two different arguments: - whether the monkey has the copyright (PETA's argument): this was smacked down by the court twice, the second court explicitely setting a precedent. - whether the photograph has coypright: as far as I know he doesn't, as the work was deemed non copyrightable (ruled as not created by a human) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...

kromem 3y ago

Your prompt for the AI image generation is copyrightable. The output is not. The photo you take involved choices of composition and timing and equipment choice. Just because you don't feel you put in a lot of consideration does not mean at a fundamental level that you still put in creative choices that give the resulting product copyright protection. But if you took that photo and put it into software which made a derivative image without human creativity, then while the original image would be copyrightable the resulting derivative output would not. The ideal path forward in copyright would be no infringement in use of materials for training and no protection in AI output with infringement possible against output too close/derivative of protected images. It's not infringement if you learned to draw tracing Mickey Mouse, your Gerry Gerbil cartoons are fine, but if you draw Mickey Mouse and distribute it, you'll hear from Disney's lawyers. AI should be the same with the exception that the Gerry Gerbil cartoons would not be copyrightable.

wizzwizz4 3y ago
> then while the original image would be copyrightable the resulting derivative output would not. Excellent! I'll put the Inheritance Cycle through a synonymiser, and have a copyright-free (if somewhat degraded) version. Take that, Christopher Paolini! … wait. What you say might well be correct: the law is often foolish. But I'd imagine the creativity-free derivative work still counts as a derivative work of the original, copyright-eligible work.
- chottocharaii 3y ago
  Yes it'd be a derivative work owned by Paolini. Paolini would have copyright to the derivative work, to the extent that he has rights over derivative material. However, the prompter would have nothing
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    If I write a poem and put it into Stable Diffusion, how is what is produced not a derivative work of my poem? We can argue that it's a derivative work of many other things, but that doesn't make it not a derivative work of the poem. One way it might not be is if Stable Diffusion is seem more like a hash algorithm than a synonymiser. But I don't see why it should, because there's a meaningful correspondence between the input and the output of the system.