7 ms·
AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted after Supreme Court declines review
- hermannj314 7mo agoInitialize an algorithm to point your camera at the street and write those bytes to disk and you are the author of a perpetual stream of data. Initialize an algorithm to point your camera at the street and describe those bytes in words and you are no longer the author a perpetual stream of data. In a world where slapping an overlay of someone looking incredulous over someone else's video is considered "adding substantive commentary" by every major video sharing platform, I don't even try to understand copyright law at all. It is way over my head.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- dathinab 7mo ago> slapping an overlay of someone looking incredulous over someone else's video is considered it really isn't, you actually have to provide enough relevant commentary for it to be transformative it just looks like that because - not every claim leads to a take down, more common is that the advertisement revenue is redirected to the owner of the original video. That is very very common, especially on YT, but not really visible as viewer. - there are enough copyright holders which overall tolerate reactions, even if they don't fall under fair use. - Sometimes people claim it doesn't fall under fair use when they don't like how the reaction is done, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be ruled fair uses if it came in front of court. - Sometimes people reacting have explicit permission from the original author to do so, no matter if it counts as fair use or not. and maybe most relevant here, pretty much all large platforms have a tendency to favor the person claiming the copyright violation over the person which reacted to it. To a point there is is sometimes a big problem if systematically abused with false claims.
- mapt 7mo agoIf it makes seven figures of revenue, there is a real system in place to litigate copyright disputes between corporations. Two kaijiu summoned by ritual magic to fight for the future of the franchise / giant pile of money. Everything else in the entire system is just bits of monster and building falling randomly. We know if we put the whole population under strict scrutiny ("laser eyes" + "lightning wings"), it would kill every last one of them; every teenager is theoretically criminally liable for the GDP of the Milky Way, a series of violations beginning with a performance of The Birthday Song at their first cake day. Even hiring the cheapest defense lawyer would bankrupt nearly any family in the nation. So we try imperfectly to dodge copyright, hopefully by a couple zip codes, and live in a state of nature on the ground.
- filoleg 7mo agoThose two hypothetical scenarios you listed don’t necessarily work the way you are describing it, which is why the whole logic and mechanisms behind the US copyright laws might seem incomprehensible or illogical to you. In reality, it is way more complex and less clear-cut. Which makes sense, because oversimplifying it will lead to silly-sounding conclusions and an almost entirely incorrect understanding of how this works. For those who don’t want to read the actual full explanation (which is a totally normal position, as the explanation is going fairly into the weeds), I will just a put a TLDR summary at the end. I suggest everyone to check out that summary first, and then come back here if there is interest in a more detailed explanation. ---------------------------- First, we gotta settle on 3 key concepts (among many) the US copyright law relies on. 1. Human authorship - self-explanatory; you cannot assign authorship to a fish or your smartphone. 2. Original/minimal creativity - some creative choices, not just "I pressed the button." 3. Fixation - the content needs to be recorded on a tangible medium; you cannot copyright a "mood" or a thought, since those aren’t tangible media. Now onto your hypothetical scenarios: 1) "Initialize an algorithm to point your camera at the street and write those bytes to disk and you are the author of a perpetual stream of data." Writing bytes to disk satisfies fixation, but it doesn’t automatically make you the author of a copyrightable work. You gotta satisfy the minimum creativity requirement too (e.g., camera positioning, setup, any other creative choices/actions, etc.). Otherwise you are just running a fully automated security cam feed with zero human input, and those videos aren’t easily copyrightable (if at all). You might own copyright in a video work if there’s sufficient human creative authorship - but mere automated recording doesn’t guarantee that. 2) "Initialize an algorithm to point your camera at the street and describe those bytes in words and you are no longer the author a perpetual stream of data." This is just close to being plainly incorrect. If you (a human) write a textual description, that text is typically copyrightable as a literary work (assuming it’s not purely mechanical like "frame 1: car, frame 2: another car, etc." with no expressive choices). Creating a description doesn’t erase any copyright you may or may not have had in the underlying recording. They’re just different works (audiovisual work vs. text work). Important to note: neither makes you the author or owner of the underlying "data" of reality, because copyright protects expression, not the underlying facts. ---------------------------- TLDR: * Recording the street can produce a copyrightable work if there is human authorship and minimal creativity in how the recording is made. Pure automated capture may fail that. * Describing the street in words is usually a separate, independently copyrightable work (e.g., a text or audio version of those words), but it doesn’t change the status of the underlying recording.
- stavros 7mo agoAI-generated art can't be copyrighted, fine. But what does this mean for the huge spectrum between "I did some fingerpainting" and "Nano Banana spat out this painting"? What if I use Photoshop and context-aware fill a cloud in? Is that AI-generated or human-generated art?
- dathinab 7mo agomost likely counts as AI-assisted art, which is copyrightable with you as the owner like most things copyright there is a gray area there but in most cases it's either pretty clear and courts would most likely rule in your (copyright holder) if you somehow manage to hit the perfect middle of the gray area through if you tell the court "the author is my AI" (like in this case), the outcome is pretty obvious also for better understanding using AI doesn't erase copyright, it just doesn't add it. So if you image was copyrightable before you used an AI tool to change it will stay copyrightable (as long as the original image is still in there to a reasonable degree).
- margalabargala 7mo agoThey cover this. It has to have "substantial human authorship". So if you start with something you truly made, it would be difficult to use so much context aware fill to negate that. If you start with something AI generated,at what point does it become copywritable? This is less clear. But that's fine, because the decision does not torpedo anyone's existing Photoshop workflows.
- rickydroll 7mo agoI wonder if Nano Banana spits out an image and I copy it by hand into a different medium like acrylics, chalk, or charcoal. Does a manual transcription suddenly render the image worthy of copyright? This also raises the meta question: how much does an image need to change to acquire a new copyright? For example, if you change the Last Supper to include two fat Jesuses on either side of the single skinny Jesus, is that enough?
- ThrowawayTestr 7mo agoA human couldn't recreate it perfectly in a different medium, thus you are adding human creativity to it, thus copyrightable.
- OutOfHere 7mo agoWhy is "AI-generated code" not also "AI art"? What makes "AI-generated code" copyrightable then? Nothing! Being that everything will be made using AI in the future, the courts just suicided the copyright system! Or where exactly does art end and code begin? The same applies to documents and designs. If I take your AI-generated code file and write it as an artsy-looking image, do I get to deny you copyright?
- CJefferson 7mo agoNo-one has checked in court of AI-generated code is copyrightable. Personally I hope it's not. To me, this is the best outcome for AI in general. If we are going to violate everyone's copyright training AIs, then it's only fair you don't get AI protection on the output.
- dathinab 7mo agoit's about copyrighted content so yes it applies to fully AI-generated code as much as to "AI art". like with AI assisted art it doesn't apply to AI assisted coding and yes if everything is fully AI generate there is no copyright anymore, that is by design! Copyright is there to protect human creativity/time investment. If there is no creativity/time investment, then there is no reason for copyright to exist either. Having still copyright there would mean moving it from a law to protect creative work to a law to protect the privileged few which can afford to just mass generate "everything" with AI. That isn't just very undesirable, it's kinda plain evil, as it would mean screwing over the majority of humanity. Naturally as mentioned that only applies to full AI products, not to AI assisted products in which case the "human contribution" and thinks resulting from it still have copyright.
- dragonwriter 7mo ago> Why is "AI-generated code" not also "AI art"? It is, and if you did what the actor in this case did with code (tried to register a copyright on a piece of code disclaiming any human authorship and claiming an AI tool as the sole author) it would also not be copyrightable. This case does not actually address what people are actually mostly interested in with copyrightability of works made by humans with the assistance of AI tools, where the human running the tool is claiming authorship, because that was not what happened that was being fought over here.
- dathinab 7mo agoLong standing well known issue, no copyright (in many countries) and (in some countries) non patentable, too. Through this isn't true for AI assisted art. And the gray area is very wide and very legal unclear (gray area between human art with AI assistance (e.g. "AI"/transformer architecture based line smoothing or color calibration) and AI art with human touch added to it).
- foltik 7mo ago> Thaler’s request to copyright an image, called A Recent Entrance to Paradise, on behalf of an algorithm he created. The courts just take issue with him naming his AI system as the sole author and himself as the copyright owner. If you just copyright it normally with yourself as the author, seems like it would be fine to copyright whatever bs you want?
- ahhhhnoooo 7mo agoClaiming that you digitally painted it? (Fraud?) I mean, I guess lying is something you could do.
- reactordev 7mo agoA common technique in paint print shops is to print the piece on canvas, then “add” color to it in globs of acrylic that match, making it stand off from the canvas. A very quick a clever trick to recreate multiples of a piece.
- youknownothing 7mo agoPhotography is a copyrightable art, but don't say that most of the work is actually done by a machine. Or even by the engineer who built the machine. You could argue that the photographer just presses a button and, perhaps, airbrushes it later in photoshop, and yet that's art.
- throwaway85825 7mo agoCan you use "I believed this was AI generated" as a copyright defense now?
- furyofantares 7mo agoNo? Just as you've never been able to use your ignorance as a defense?
- RavlaAlvar 7mo agoI wonder by that logic, can AI generated art violate other’s copyright?
- dathinab 7mo agoAI usage doesn't remove copyright, it just doesn't gain any new copyright by itself so a AI based transformation of a copyrighted input is as much a potential copyright violation as a non AI based transformation. It's just that the human transformation can by potentially itself be seen as art, so if you have a license or fair use you now can have copyright on the transformed peace (with some limitations (1)). And if the transformation is done by AI you won't (but the original authors "partial" copyright on the outcome is still there). (1): Like if you (human) "transform" a peace of art in 1000 different ways each keeping 0.001% of the original you will likely get 1000x copyright. But if you then use this 1000 peaces you have copyright too to regenerate the original you still have full copyright infringement. In general the law doesn't care about your "trickery" trying to bend laws.
- ModernMech 7mo agoExactly 0 of the artists I know “generate” their images outright - AI generations are always part of a pretty typical artistic workflow. The way I think of it is this: typical art creation starts from a blank canvas and the artist adds layer upon layer of what you want. Eventually something coherent (to the artist at least) pops out. AI art starts from a canvas which is filled, and the artist changes the filled canvas to meet their perspective. It’s like those projects where people take a vintage painting and add Pokémon to it. Mostly the people I see using AI art are traditional artists who view it as a new medium in their process, very few “generate” and call it a day.
- delichon 7mo ago> The outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts. https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2025/1060.html https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2025/1060.html I think that this means that a single prompt alone does not convey copyright. But if you had spent many hours before the prompt fine tuning the model, or much effort after the prompt shaping the result with further prompts, it could be. I disagree with this approach because I've seen how much creativity and effort some people can put into slowly evolving a single elaborate prompt. AI can be used as another kind of brush. A prompt can be a masterpiece.
- mcmcmc 7mo ago> AI can be used as another kind of brush. A prompt can be a masterpiece What a joke. No, AI is not a brush, it is a slop machine that spits out derivatives of the actual masters. If you go back and forth with a human artist about a commission where you keep nitpicking and wanting adjustments, does that make you the artist? No, it makes you the “ideas guy”
- betaby 7mo ago> spits out derivatives of the actual masters A brief history of art in general.
- camillomiller 7mo ago[flagged]
- Ajakks 7mo agoAs someone who has actually studied art - right back at you. All the most famous paintings are done like a hundred times - certain scenes were done by ALL Masters, as like a rite of passage or proof of arrival - pretty much the whole time between the OG Masters and modern art. "Who is your favorite Sebastian?" Is a legit question, for example.
- thedangler 7mo agodoes that mean movies with AI generated art can be repackaged and sold by anyone?
- layer8 7mo agoOnly if they don’t have “substantial human authorship”.
- kirykl 7mo agoAdd a single pixel manually
- AndrewDucker 7mo agoYou then own the copyright on that pixel.
- layer8 7mo agoThat probably wouldn’t count as “substantial human authorship”.
- joquarky 7mo agoReminds me of "forever minus a day"
- simonw 7mo agoI feel like the more important question here is whether AI-generated code can be copyrighted. Companies responsible for several billion dollars worth of software written over the past ~36 months would really like to know the answer to that one.
- yorwba 7mo agoIt doesn't really matter as long as you keep physical control of the code and don't let others copy it.
- beej71 7mo agoNor does it matter if code has no value. I do think what happens in this case is SCOTUS will ultimately rule that AI-built code is copyrightable while art is not. I'm sure there's some rationale thick enough for them.
- sowbug 7mo agoIt's strange how hard it is to think of a situation that could lead to that case. Who would bother filing an infringement lawsuit for code whose very existence proves that it can be derived by anyone from LLM prompts? What would the damages even be? Interesting world we live in. Soon it'll be faster to one-shot the tiny slice of functionality I need from Adobe CS than to navigate their subscription cancellation obstacle course.
- beej71 7mo ago> Soon it'll be faster to one-shot the tiny slice of functionality I need from Adobe CS than to navigate their subscription cancellation obstacle course. Pretty sure you're already in that world. ;)
- joquarky 7mo agoThis is precisely why copyright is practically obsolete. You can't legally forbid someone from paraphrasing, and now we can easily automate it to just within the threshold set by legal cases.
- owenpalmer 7mo agoIf we're going to allow AI companies to use copyrighted material in training, the absolute least we could do is prevent copyright of the outputted content.
- ChrisArchitect 7mo ago[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47223022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47223022
- SpicyLemonZest 7mo agoI don't think this article's analysis is accurate. The "human authorship" in Thaler's case wasn't about the abstract concept of human authorship; he literally did not put his name in the "authorship" field of the form, and insisted on review that his name doesn't belong there because he's not the author. So the ruling doesn't necessarily endorse the Copyright Office's analysis referenced in the article (https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...), and I think that analysis is just not correct. They describe a creator of AI art as simply "re-rolling the dice" when they try different prompts, but that's not correct, clever prompt engineering definitely allows you to "constrain or channel the program’s processing of the sourcenmaterial" and "alter[] the degree of control over the process"
- Ajakks 7mo agoEvery time I open my phone and find myself back on this comment thread, I find new nonsense. If you are "anti-AI" and you’ve never changed or evolved your argument - I suggest a pause, a step back and a substantial revaluation. Some of these comments in this thread - have me wondering if they have actually interacted with an AI. You are not correct on "principle" - this isn't a moral thing, if you have taken an ethical position - its bc you dont have a functional understanding of how to make it function. If you were functionally interacting with AI, you would have a more substantial postion, with actual criticism that would have value. I'm reading a lot of sloppy- written by people, about AI slop.
- keeda 7mo agoUnpopular opinion: AI is just a new medium of art. It's like the advent of photography after painting. It was dismissed as an art form for a long time: - https://antique-photography.com/when-was-photography-considered-art-exploring-its-journey-to-artistic-recognition-and-acceptance/ https://antique-photography.com/when-was-photography-conside... - https://medium.com/@aaronhertzmann/how-photography-became-an-art-form-7b74da777c63 https://medium.com/@aaronhertzmann/how-photography-became-an... (from 2018!) Similarly, right now AI art is widely dismissed as "just prompts." But having tried many times to generate images via prompts, it's very hard to get what's in my head to show up in the result. I ended up spending much more time editing the images than creating them... but, I could do that with much simpler tools, without learning advanced tools like Photoshop. In a couple of instances though, the AI has blown me away by generating something that better captured what I wanted to convey! I suspect the trick is in beng very detailed in where I was coming from and the emotions I wanted to engender. I predict appreciation of AI art will shift to overall imagination, taste, and appreciation of technical nuances noticeable only to those "skilled in the art", such as prompting techniques and the quirks of the model used. I even suspect there will be genres of AI art using weaker models (kind of like photographs with Polaroid cameras.)
- tracker1 7mo agoWhat happens with software now?
- joquarky 7mo agoSoftware is now disposable.
- dragonwriter 7mo agoNote that this has very little bearing on the real interesting questions of whether and when human authors can copyright works where AI was used as a tool; this case is specifically about attempts by Thaler to apply for copyright listing an AI as author of a work for which he explicitly denied any human authorship.
- joquarky 7mo agoThe main reason this is getting really complicated is because copyright inherently goes against the flow of how nature works. It's irrational at its core. It requires increasing amounts of maintenance to sustain. It doesn't even promote the progress of science and useful arts anymore, and in fact when mixed with our current form of capitalism, it hinders it.
- matty22 7mo agoThe irony of someone using AI trained on stolen copyrighted art to generate "art" and then wanting to copyright said "art" is hilarious.