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If the prompt is copyrightable, then why wouldn't that copyright flow through to the output? I can't legally pirate Windows just because the source code was ru

If the prompt is copyrightable, then why wouldn't that copyright flow through to the output? I can't legally pirate Windows just because the source code was run through a compiler. Even though the compiler itself adds no additional creativity, the underlying source code is still a creative work[0], so pirating the binaries still infringes a copyright. Just one that's in a slightly different place than what we're normally used to thinking about. Just to drive the point home, there's a few other situations in which copyright "flows through" to things not subject to copyright. Back in the days of copyright formalities, if you published before properly registering something, your work would be born into the public domain. And this occasionally happened to serial media - e.g. someone might just forget to register the third season of a TV show. In that particular case[1], seasons one and two are still copyrighted, and because season three is a derivative work of the prior season, nobody but the original owner can actually make any use of season three. The only practical difference is that the company that owns that TV show lost one year of copyright ownership over the third season. [0] By definitions of law. I honestly think most software shouldn't have been made copyrightable, but once Congress said "software is copyrightable" that put that question to bed. [1] I don't remember the name of the TV show or the court case, but this IS a thing that happened and this theory IS court tested.

Retric 3y ago
In general if you pay someone to paint a picture they own the copyright and it needs to be assigned back to you even if you give them quite specific instructions. The instructions lacked sufficient control over the outcome to give some form of dual copyright. Presumably that general rule would also prevent your instructions to DALLE from giving you copyright ownership of the output either. The AI isn’t getting ownership, so it’s either in the public domain or a derivative work from the artists creating the training data.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  Right. And furthermore, I don't actually think prompts alone are copyrightable in most cases - I just wanted to propose an argumentum ad absurdum. Certainly, you can't argue creativity when you're also keyword-stuffing your prompts to call up various feature sets that the model just so happens to associate with them.
  - justinjlynn 3y ago
    The output of a compiler (i.e. A translation program) is created via a prompt (the source code). The output object code is very much copyrighted. People keyword stuff their source code all the time (pragmas) in order to influence the generated output. Why does that object code deserve copyright protection except when the compiler is an AI model (i.e. A translation program)? Compilers use genetic algorithms and weights from profiling in order to generate better output. Where does the output stop being capable of copyright protection because it's no longer "creative"? If a museum can include a small portion of a frame around a public domain painting and claim new copyright as a result - surely any smallest spark or creative influence qualifies, including choosing a single word and choosing the model and time and which output is selected does as well. The idea of work for hire, and the notion of copyright assignment, applies to people and not machines or processes employed in the creation of a work. Your brush manufacturer would never dare try to claim that their creative selection of fibres and thus their contribution to the unique brush patterns in your painting constitutes a creative contribution to your work. Why is a complex digital model which does the same any different? Perhaps it is copyright as a whole that is wrong and is nothing to do with AI. This is what we get for creating imaginary property as a means to finance speculative creative endeavours in a capitalist system. So, yeah. Fun times there - once again technology challenges another economic status quo.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Multiple independently created compilers can directly translate source code to unoptimized machine code that works in a completely straightforward fashion based on the definition of the language. There’s a great deal of complexity involved in creating more optimized output, but the goal is to have functionally equivalent programs. There’s no way to map DALLE prompts into any kind of obvious picture from the input. Even DALLE itself can produce a wide range of outputs from a single input.
      - justinjlynn 3y ago
        There is, the input is the description of the image so produced plus the hidden elements and parameters (randomness, etc) that users often don't see - with these there is a deterministic input to output relationship. The fitness of the model is in how closely the output matches what we expect to see from them given the inputs we give. That's the point of them. Models are compilers. The distinction is really only in the complexity and ambiguity of the language specifications they implement - not in any fundamental aspect of their function. There isn't a single person alive who understands how a non-trivial compiler works in its entirety, just as nobody really knows how LLMs work yet. That's not the point.

Retric 3y ago

In general if you pay someone to paint a picture they own the copyright and it needs to be assigned back to you even if you give them quite specific instructions. The instructions lacked sufficient control over the outcome to give some form of dual copyright. Presumably that general rule would also prevent your instructions to DALLE from giving you copyright ownership of the output either. The AI isn’t getting ownership, so it’s either in the public domain or a derivative work from the artists creating the training data.

kmeisthax 3y ago
Right. And furthermore, I don't actually think prompts alone are copyrightable in most cases - I just wanted to propose an argumentum ad absurdum. Certainly, you can't argue creativity when you're also keyword-stuffing your prompts to call up various feature sets that the model just so happens to associate with them.
- justinjlynn 3y ago
  The output of a compiler (i.e. A translation program) is created via a prompt (the source code). The output object code is very much copyrighted. People keyword stuff their source code all the time (pragmas) in order to influence the generated output. Why does that object code deserve copyright protection except when the compiler is an AI model (i.e. A translation program)? Compilers use genetic algorithms and weights from profiling in order to generate better output. Where does the output stop being capable of copyright protection because it's no longer "creative"? If a museum can include a small portion of a frame around a public domain painting and claim new copyright as a result - surely any smallest spark or creative influence qualifies, including choosing a single word and choosing the model and time and which output is selected does as well. The idea of work for hire, and the notion of copyright assignment, applies to people and not machines or processes employed in the creation of a work. Your brush manufacturer would never dare try to claim that their creative selection of fibres and thus their contribution to the unique brush patterns in your painting constitutes a creative contribution to your work. Why is a complex digital model which does the same any different? Perhaps it is copyright as a whole that is wrong and is nothing to do with AI. This is what we get for creating imaginary property as a means to finance speculative creative endeavours in a capitalist system. So, yeah. Fun times there - once again technology challenges another economic status quo.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Multiple independently created compilers can directly translate source code to unoptimized machine code that works in a completely straightforward fashion based on the definition of the language. There’s a great deal of complexity involved in creating more optimized output, but the goal is to have functionally equivalent programs. There’s no way to map DALLE prompts into any kind of obvious picture from the input. Even DALLE itself can produce a wide range of outputs from a single input.
    - justinjlynn 3y ago
      There is, the input is the description of the image so produced plus the hidden elements and parameters (randomness, etc) that users often don't see - with these there is a deterministic input to output relationship. The fitness of the model is in how closely the output matches what we expect to see from them given the inputs we give. That's the point of them. Models are compilers. The distinction is really only in the complexity and ambiguity of the language specifications they implement - not in any fundamental aspect of their function. There isn't a single person alive who understands how a non-trivial compiler works in its entirety, just as nobody really knows how LLMs work yet. That's not the point.