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> Also I don't understand why pressing a button on a camera is so different than writing a prompt and pressing a button, one clearly grants you human authorship

> Also I don't understand why pressing a button on a camera is so different than writing a prompt and pressing a button, one clearly grants you human authorship the other is disputed. In the case of a camera, you know how the pohotgraph will turn out. You set and positioned the camera in a specific, creative way to ensure that composition. In the case of an AI, it's not the paintbrush, it's the painter. The prompts serve less as arms to a brush and more as instructions to a commissioned artist.

GaggiX 3y ago
>you know how the pohotgraph will turn out So if I stick out the camera from a corner then I don't own the copyright because I don't know how the photograph will turn out, if that's not case then I should own the copyright of an AI generated image because in both cases I have an approximate understanding of what the image would be.
- EMIRELADERO 3y ago
  With AI, you control the idea but you have no understanding of the creative expression that will result from entering a prompt.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    With the simplest, one-shot, prompt-only workflow, sure, that might be a reasonable approximation of the truth.
  - minimaxir 3y ago
    With just a text prompt, no. But there are an increasing number of ways to use human decision-making to strongly and evidently control the outputs (LoRAs, ControlNet, Img2Img) that haven't been legally tested yet.
  - lowdest 3y ago
    This applies only to under-specified prompting. I usually go in with a finished image in mind, and use very long prompts and inpainting to make it real. It can take dozens of images to get the prompt to reflect what I have in mind, then several more iterations to polish it. While I can technically produce several images per minute, I usually spend about 30 minutes to 1 hour to get the output I want, and more if it's going to be an extra large or complicated piece. This is very much like the "is electronic music real music?" debates when people can quickly throw together some presets and hit play.
    - mackek2 3y ago
      You have copyright ownership of the work you produced, the prompt (under specified or not really), but not the output of the model.
- danShumway 3y ago
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality#Pre-positioned_recording_devices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality#Pre-p... TLDR it's untested in United States court, but yes, the same principles apply. You very well might not own the copyright on that street-corner photo. There is no way of getting around the human authorship and creativity requirement. There's no loophole that AI can sneak though. If AI output does become copyrightable, it will only be because of arguments that the controlling of that AI is sufficiently creative and deliberate to pass the minimum threshold required by law and the outcome isn't a random or uncontrolled result. Saying that it's "just like pressing buttons on a camera" does you no favors, if photography was just pressing a button then it wouldn't be copyrightable. And in fact, there was an 1884 Supreme Court challenge over photography copyright that was predicated exactly on the argument that photography was a purely mechanical reconstruction of an existing scene (https://blogs.loc.gov/copyright/2020/09/historic-court-cases-that-helped-shape-scope-of-copyright-protections/ https://blogs.loc.gov/copyright/2020/09/historic-court-cases...). The argument was rejected not because purely mechanical reconstructions are copyrightable, but because the court disagreed and said that photography was both an act of human creativity and that it had a controlled outcome, similar to "writing" or "engraving". And note that a critical component of "writing" or "engraving" is intent and control. When you write down something on a page, you get the result that you intended to put on the page; you control the "words" that appear. An important question when discussing AI copyright is what the threshold is where we can say that use is actually controlling the AI. A vague prompt might not qualify, an extremely specific prompt that is itself a creative expression might? A more guided process might? (although it's not certain if this would cover the resulting image or just the prompt itself). This is all untested in current law.
dale_glass 3y ago
AI is interesting because sometimes it's the paintbrush, sometimes not, and it's very hard for people to tell at a glance. Right now there's thing like ControlNet which allows you to draw a skeleton for the AI to follow. There are plugins that provide masking. You can draw stuff on top of an existing image. You can draw a sketch for the AI to follow. You can fix details in post. So there's a multitude of possibilities available. The interesting thing is that unless you are involved in the scene it's very hard to tell what took the user a lot of work, guidance and retouching to generate, and what popped out just like that. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZtoBSDUdEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZtoBSDUdEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiG_v61cLxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiG_v61cLxI
Kuinox 3y ago
When prompting an image with AI, it's commong to lay basics things then keep adding things so it looks like your desired outcome. There can be good unexpected surprise, but most of the time you guide it to the wanted result.
__loam 3y ago
The labor involved is also a lot hairier. With the camera, all the effort put into designing it and manufacturing it had an intended end of a photographer taking pictures. That is the explicit goal. AI is entirely reliant on labor used without consent.

GaggiX 3y ago

>you know how the pohotgraph will turn out So if I stick out the camera from a corner then I don't own the copyright because I don't know how the photograph will turn out, if that's not case then I should own the copyright of an AI generated image because in both cases I have an approximate understanding of what the image would be.

EMIRELADERO 3y ago
With AI, you control the idea but you have no understanding of the creative expression that will result from entering a prompt.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  With the simplest, one-shot, prompt-only workflow, sure, that might be a reasonable approximation of the truth.
- minimaxir 3y ago
  With just a text prompt, no. But there are an increasing number of ways to use human decision-making to strongly and evidently control the outputs (LoRAs, ControlNet, Img2Img) that haven't been legally tested yet.
- lowdest 3y ago
  This applies only to under-specified prompting. I usually go in with a finished image in mind, and use very long prompts and inpainting to make it real. It can take dozens of images to get the prompt to reflect what I have in mind, then several more iterations to polish it. While I can technically produce several images per minute, I usually spend about 30 minutes to 1 hour to get the output I want, and more if it's going to be an extra large or complicated piece. This is very much like the "is electronic music real music?" debates when people can quickly throw together some presets and hit play.
  - mackek2 3y ago
    You have copyright ownership of the work you produced, the prompt (under specified or not really), but not the output of the model.
danShumway 3y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality#Pre-positioned_recording_devices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality#Pre-p... TLDR it's untested in United States court, but yes, the same principles apply. You very well might not own the copyright on that street-corner photo. There is no way of getting around the human authorship and creativity requirement. There's no loophole that AI can sneak though. If AI output does become copyrightable, it will only be because of arguments that the controlling of that AI is sufficiently creative and deliberate to pass the minimum threshold required by law and the outcome isn't a random or uncontrolled result. Saying that it's "just like pressing buttons on a camera" does you no favors, if photography was just pressing a button then it wouldn't be copyrightable. And in fact, there was an 1884 Supreme Court challenge over photography copyright that was predicated exactly on the argument that photography was a purely mechanical reconstruction of an existing scene (https://blogs.loc.gov/copyright/2020/09/historic-court-cases-that-helped-shape-scope-of-copyright-protections/ https://blogs.loc.gov/copyright/2020/09/historic-court-cases...). The argument was rejected not because purely mechanical reconstructions are copyrightable, but because the court disagreed and said that photography was both an act of human creativity and that it had a controlled outcome, similar to "writing" or "engraving". And note that a critical component of "writing" or "engraving" is intent and control. When you write down something on a page, you get the result that you intended to put on the page; you control the "words" that appear. An important question when discussing AI copyright is what the threshold is where we can say that use is actually controlling the AI. A vague prompt might not qualify, an extremely specific prompt that is itself a creative expression might? A more guided process might? (although it's not certain if this would cover the resulting image or just the prompt itself). This is all untested in current law.

dale_glass 3y ago

AI is interesting because sometimes it's the paintbrush, sometimes not, and it's very hard for people to tell at a glance. Right now there's thing like ControlNet which allows you to draw a skeleton for the AI to follow. There are plugins that provide masking. You can draw stuff on top of an existing image. You can draw a sketch for the AI to follow. You can fix details in post. So there's a multitude of possibilities available. The interesting thing is that unless you are involved in the scene it's very hard to tell what took the user a lot of work, guidance and retouching to generate, and what popped out just like that. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZtoBSDUdEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZtoBSDUdEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiG_v61cLxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiG_v61cLxI

Kuinox 3y ago

When prompting an image with AI, it's commong to lay basics things then keep adding things so it looks like your desired outcome. There can be good unexpected surprise, but most of the time you guide it to the wanted result.

__loam 3y ago

The labor involved is also a lot hairier. With the camera, all the effort put into designing it and manufacturing it had an intended end of a photographer taking pictures. That is the explicit goal. AI is entirely reliant on labor used without consent.