3 ms·

Why is that? And who draws the line? If I use a synthesizer to generate music, does that count as AI generated?

Grombobulous 4mo ago
I was under the impression that the US copyright office/various judges already determined that anything created 100% by AI is not copyrightable. A synthesizer is not AI.
- p-e-w 4mo ago
  Nothing is “created 100% by AI” though, because AIs don’t create things without human instructions.
  - oasisbob 4mo ago
    How much instruction do you need though? What if I prompt Claude to go prompt Suno? What if the same chain happens internally at Suno? Easy to imagine the human input being very dilute and a small part overall.
    - make3 4mo ago
      Claude is a computer program, so is Suno. Someone has to pay Anthropic & to run Claude. AI does not have special moral grounding in our society.
      - oasisbob 4mo ago
        I wasn't speaking to morality, but copyright law, especially in the US, cares about the fixing of a creative act in a specific medium. Like a monkey at a camera, the automated output from an LLM does not automatically afford protection.
  - tgv 4mo ago
    The prompt is yours to copyright, the algorithm belongs to Google or Suno or whoever, but not the output. It is not your creation.
  - thewebguyd 4mo ago
    The US copyright office ruled that the instructions do not count. Prompt engineering does not constitute human authorship. Prompt is the command, but the machine determines the specific expressive elements of the output (according to the USCO). Raw LLM output is automatically public domain.
- thewebguyd 4mo ago
  Minor correction, but in the US it's not anything that's 100% by AI, it's LLM output itself is not copyrightable. Human elements injected into LLM output are. Raw LLM output lacks human authorship, and it was ruled cannot be registered for copyright protection. Raw LLM output is automatically public domain (which is also why its silly for Anthropic to be in such a tizzy about China using Claude's output, Claude's output is public domain). Only the parts of a work that are human authored can be registered for copyright. If a work was created with AI assistance, the parts that were purely AI generated cannot be registered. The US copyright office also ruled that prompt engineering does not count as human authorship. So all those people using Suno to generate AI slop music and flooding the streaming services, their output is almost certainly public domain.
  - gruez 4mo ago
    >(which is also why its silly for Anthropic to be in such a tizzy about China using Claude's output, Claude's output is public domain). I don't see how it's any more weird than reddit/stackoverflow/linkedin trying to clamp down on AI scrapers, even though they don't own the copyright to the UGC that they're preventing the bots from accessing.
    - thewebguyd 4mo ago
      The difference is in licensing. Those platforms are protecting (or rather, monetizing) a database of human authored assets which those humans have given them a license to exploit. Anthropic (and others) are trying to protect a stream of uncopyrightable, public-domain machine outputs.
      - gruez 4mo ago
        I don't see how that's relevant. They have a license to redistribute my comments, but that's the extent of their legal rights with respect to my work. They're not my agent or my publisher. Moreover I don't have any say in the matter. If I'm pro AI scraping, I can't tell them "yeah it's fine to scrape my comment, don't put up any captcha walls". Finally, what if I dedicate my comments to the public domain? Does that mean they're in the wrong to put up scraping walls?
- Freedumbs 4mo ago
  What's the technical distinction? Do you mean music that is composed by an LLM when referring to AI? How can one draw the line? It's like saying math doesn't count if the doctor used a calculator or your house isn't real because electricity was used to assemble it.
otabdeveloper4 4mo ago
AI is not a tool, it is an oracle. Furthermore, it is an oracle built on copyright infringement. Do you understand the difference between "tool" and "oracle"?
- giglamesh 4mo ago
  Tool was a kind of metal/funk band (or something like that) and Oracle is a database (management system) that somehow made a lot of money for a lot of consultants (and the oligarch owners) even though open source alternatives were far superior.
  - ozzmotik 4mo ago
    I know this is perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek but it's still astounding just how suspiciously accurate the implied parallel here is... lol
- mapontosevenths 4mo ago
  No. Explain.
  - otabdeveloper4 4mo ago
    Tools are things that you 100 percent control based on nothing but your own skill. Oracles are things that give you free stuff if you've been a good boy and respected the oracle's rituals.
    - gonzalohm 4mo ago
      So if I sample a guitar because I don't know how to play the guitar, is the tool I used to sample it "an oracle"?
      - Austizzle 4mo ago
        I think samplers are still clearly tools. You are still as a human performing with the sampler or at the very least manually arranging with it. If you gave somebody else the same sample, they would produce a different result. Whereas AI (if we ignore RNG for a moment) will produce the same output from the same prompt. It's not a tool, it's a magic box that spits out a finished product with no human effort outside of the prompt.
platevoltage 4mo ago
I don't think my Yamaha DX7 qualifies as AI in any sense of the word.

I was under the impression that the US copyright office/various judges already determined that anything created 100% by AI is not copyrightable. A synthesizer is not AI.

p-e-w 4mo ago
Nothing is “created 100% by AI” though, because AIs don’t create things without human instructions.
- oasisbob 4mo ago
  How much instruction do you need though? What if I prompt Claude to go prompt Suno? What if the same chain happens internally at Suno? Easy to imagine the human input being very dilute and a small part overall.
  - make3 4mo ago
    Claude is a computer program, so is Suno. Someone has to pay Anthropic & to run Claude. AI does not have special moral grounding in our society.
    - oasisbob 4mo ago
      I wasn't speaking to morality, but copyright law, especially in the US, cares about the fixing of a creative act in a specific medium. Like a monkey at a camera, the automated output from an LLM does not automatically afford protection.
- tgv 4mo ago
  The prompt is yours to copyright, the algorithm belongs to Google or Suno or whoever, but not the output. It is not your creation.
- thewebguyd 4mo ago
  The US copyright office ruled that the instructions do not count. Prompt engineering does not constitute human authorship. Prompt is the command, but the machine determines the specific expressive elements of the output (according to the USCO). Raw LLM output is automatically public domain.
thewebguyd 4mo ago
Minor correction, but in the US it's not anything that's 100% by AI, it's LLM output itself is not copyrightable. Human elements injected into LLM output are. Raw LLM output lacks human authorship, and it was ruled cannot be registered for copyright protection. Raw LLM output is automatically public domain (which is also why its silly for Anthropic to be in such a tizzy about China using Claude's output, Claude's output is public domain). Only the parts of a work that are human authored can be registered for copyright. If a work was created with AI assistance, the parts that were purely AI generated cannot be registered. The US copyright office also ruled that prompt engineering does not count as human authorship. So all those people using Suno to generate AI slop music and flooding the streaming services, their output is almost certainly public domain.
- gruez 4mo ago
  >(which is also why its silly for Anthropic to be in such a tizzy about China using Claude's output, Claude's output is public domain). I don't see how it's any more weird than reddit/stackoverflow/linkedin trying to clamp down on AI scrapers, even though they don't own the copyright to the UGC that they're preventing the bots from accessing.
  - thewebguyd 4mo ago
    The difference is in licensing. Those platforms are protecting (or rather, monetizing) a database of human authored assets which those humans have given them a license to exploit. Anthropic (and others) are trying to protect a stream of uncopyrightable, public-domain machine outputs.
    - gruez 4mo ago
      I don't see how that's relevant. They have a license to redistribute my comments, but that's the extent of their legal rights with respect to my work. They're not my agent or my publisher. Moreover I don't have any say in the matter. If I'm pro AI scraping, I can't tell them "yeah it's fine to scrape my comment, don't put up any captcha walls". Finally, what if I dedicate my comments to the public domain? Does that mean they're in the wrong to put up scraping walls?
Freedumbs 4mo ago
What's the technical distinction? Do you mean music that is composed by an LLM when referring to AI? How can one draw the line? It's like saying math doesn't count if the doctor used a calculator or your house isn't real because electricity was used to assemble it.

otabdeveloper4 4mo ago

AI is not a tool, it is an oracle. Furthermore, it is an oracle built on copyright infringement. Do you understand the difference between "tool" and "oracle"?

giglamesh 4mo ago
Tool was a kind of metal/funk band (or something like that) and Oracle is a database (management system) that somehow made a lot of money for a lot of consultants (and the oligarch owners) even though open source alternatives were far superior.
- ozzmotik 4mo ago
  I know this is perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek but it's still astounding just how suspiciously accurate the implied parallel here is... lol
mapontosevenths 4mo ago
No. Explain.
- otabdeveloper4 4mo ago
  Tools are things that you 100 percent control based on nothing but your own skill. Oracles are things that give you free stuff if you've been a good boy and respected the oracle's rituals.
  - gonzalohm 4mo ago
    So if I sample a guitar because I don't know how to play the guitar, is the tool I used to sample it "an oracle"?
    - Austizzle 4mo ago
      I think samplers are still clearly tools. You are still as a human performing with the sampler or at the very least manually arranging with it. If you gave somebody else the same sample, they would produce a different result. Whereas AI (if we ignore RNG for a moment) will produce the same output from the same prompt. It's not a tool, it's a magic box that spits out a finished product with no human effort outside of the prompt.

platevoltage 4mo ago

I don't think my Yamaha DX7 qualifies as AI in any sense of the word.