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> Where is the cut-off exactly? This is the difference between legal thinking and CS. There is a spectrum between 100% human-generated (and copyright-eligible)

> Where is the cut-off exactly? This is the difference between legal thinking and CS. There is a spectrum between 100% human-generated (and copyright-eligible) and 100% machine-generated (and ineligible), and in between there are gray areas. To us, that is a problem, because it implies ambiguity. Where is the cut-off? In law, that is normal. No actions are the same; everything is on a spectrum from allowed to illegal. Judging the boundary is made on a case-by-case basis through legal argument, evaluated by a judge or jury. So to the Copyright Office, it is sufficient to say that this particular way of AI generating art doesn't involve enough human creativity. But you won't get them to define enough in the abstract, for any general case, because that is essentially impossible, and can only be done by evaluating concrete cases.

Der_Einzige 3y ago
Sorry, not everything is evaluated on a "case-by-case" basis per say, there is a difference between a "Bright-Line" (clearly specified rule in court) and a "Balancing-Test" (what you describe). I think it's actually pretty damn easy to define "enough" precisely. If the AI + human generated image cannot be easily recreated by AI, than it's enough. So, for example, random image from civit.ai which is nothing more than a prompt, and negative prompts. This fails the test because I can run the image through CLIP and get (almost) the same exact prompts used to generate it Now let's say I generate an image using a bunch of custom tools and extensions, such as regional color-loss (i.e. top right of the image must be blue and I will force the model to prefer blue outputs), and leveraging a lora model at 0.3 weight trained on my kids sketch-book drawing style. There's no way for any AI model that hasn't been configured exactly by my human hands to deduce anything approaching the prompt used to generate it (CLIP/Other LLMs doesn't know about extensions and loras). Courts need a bright-line here, balancing tests lead to miscarriages of justice, which is what looks like is going to happen here a lot.
- capnrefsmmat 3y ago
  There are fairly few bright-line tests, because they're hard to write. For instance, consider your proposed test: The copyrightability of works would change retroactively depending on the capabilities of AI. Something that can't be reproduced by AI today could be next year. Is that a desirable outcome?
- dahfizz 3y ago
  >I think it's actually pretty damn easy to define "enough" precisely. If the AI + human generated image cannot be easily recreated by AI, than it's enough. That's a terrible test, because the capabilities of LLMs are constantly evolving. And the words "easily" and "recreate" just creates more ambiguity.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    I struggle to come up with a better definition of “enough” than his. It could be clarified to “the original AI.”
- itishappy 3y ago
  > I think it's actually pretty damn easy to define "enough" precisely. If the AI + human generated image cannot be easily recreated by AI, than it's enough. Would you be on-board with the inverse of this? You cannot copyright what cannot be generated by a human.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Very eloquently put. I often find it interesting how when these types of issues come up, technologists often interpret it using "transitive rules" that are natural in math and engineering, but "the real world" doesn't follow this logical progression. That is, if you have "A implies B, and B implies C, and C implies D, then A implies D". The problem is that in "the real world" there are enough slight differences at each step that most people feel that A does not imply D. Point being, there are lots of comments here along the lines of "If creating art with a tool can be copyrighted, how is art created with Photoshop copyrightable but art created with AI is not". The difference is that most people (and, most importantly, the US Copyright Office) believe that AI crosses the line between being "just a tool" to actually being the author of significant parts of the work. The fact that that line is gray is not a fundamental problem, and as you point out it occurs all the time in the legal realm.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > That is, if you have "A implies B, and B implies C, and C implies D, then A implies D". The problem is that in "the real world" there are enough slight differences at each step that most people feel that A does not imply D. So you just got it wrong and A does not imply D. Obviously logic applies to the world outside math and computer science. This is by no means settled legally either.
nonethewiser 3y ago
> In law, that is normal. Normal, sure, but still a problem in the sense that they need to clarify it and try not to write ambiguous laws. The existence of the law, lawyers, and the whole judicial and lawmaking systems is proof that its difficult and complicated. I just dont see the contrast with computer science here.
johngladtj 3y ago
And that's the problem with the law.

Der_Einzige 3y ago

Sorry, not everything is evaluated on a "case-by-case" basis per say, there is a difference between a "Bright-Line" (clearly specified rule in court) and a "Balancing-Test" (what you describe). I think it's actually pretty damn easy to define "enough" precisely. If the AI + human generated image cannot be easily recreated by AI, than it's enough. So, for example, random image from civit.ai which is nothing more than a prompt, and negative prompts. This fails the test because I can run the image through CLIP and get (almost) the same exact prompts used to generate it Now let's say I generate an image using a bunch of custom tools and extensions, such as regional color-loss (i.e. top right of the image must be blue and I will force the model to prefer blue outputs), and leveraging a lora model at 0.3 weight trained on my kids sketch-book drawing style. There's no way for any AI model that hasn't been configured exactly by my human hands to deduce anything approaching the prompt used to generate it (CLIP/Other LLMs doesn't know about extensions and loras). Courts need a bright-line here, balancing tests lead to miscarriages of justice, which is what looks like is going to happen here a lot.

capnrefsmmat 3y ago
There are fairly few bright-line tests, because they're hard to write. For instance, consider your proposed test: The copyrightability of works would change retroactively depending on the capabilities of AI. Something that can't be reproduced by AI today could be next year. Is that a desirable outcome?
dahfizz 3y ago
>I think it's actually pretty damn easy to define "enough" precisely. If the AI + human generated image cannot be easily recreated by AI, than it's enough. That's a terrible test, because the capabilities of LLMs are constantly evolving. And the words "easily" and "recreate" just creates more ambiguity.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  I struggle to come up with a better definition of “enough” than his. It could be clarified to “the original AI.”
itishappy 3y ago
> I think it's actually pretty damn easy to define "enough" precisely. If the AI + human generated image cannot be easily recreated by AI, than it's enough. Would you be on-board with the inverse of this? You cannot copyright what cannot be generated by a human.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Very eloquently put. I often find it interesting how when these types of issues come up, technologists often interpret it using "transitive rules" that are natural in math and engineering, but "the real world" doesn't follow this logical progression. That is, if you have "A implies B, and B implies C, and C implies D, then A implies D". The problem is that in "the real world" there are enough slight differences at each step that most people feel that A does not imply D. Point being, there are lots of comments here along the lines of "If creating art with a tool can be copyrighted, how is art created with Photoshop copyrightable but art created with AI is not". The difference is that most people (and, most importantly, the US Copyright Office) believe that AI crosses the line between being "just a tool" to actually being the author of significant parts of the work. The fact that that line is gray is not a fundamental problem, and as you point out it occurs all the time in the legal realm.

nonethewiser 3y ago
> That is, if you have "A implies B, and B implies C, and C implies D, then A implies D". The problem is that in "the real world" there are enough slight differences at each step that most people feel that A does not imply D. So you just got it wrong and A does not imply D. Obviously logic applies to the world outside math and computer science. This is by no means settled legally either.

nonethewiser 3y ago

> In law, that is normal. Normal, sure, but still a problem in the sense that they need to clarify it and try not to write ambiguous laws. The existence of the law, lawyers, and the whole judicial and lawmaking systems is proof that its difficult and complicated. I just dont see the contrast with computer science here.

johngladtj 3y ago

And that's the problem with the law.