[HN Gopher] US judge: Art created solely by artificial intellige...
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US judge: Art created solely by artificial intelligence cannot be
copyrighted
Author : carride
Score : 33 points
Date : 2023-08-21 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| More discussion over here from 2 days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37188791
| juris wrote:
| Just spitballing here, because this is very fun to think about.
|
| If I reproduce the likeness of Mickey Mouse via an AI, then
| because an AI made it, is there no defensible claim from Disney
| to own the copyright? That doesn't make intuitive sense, as we
| 'sort of know' that Disney owns the likeness.
|
| Meanwhile, if I produce one single image that I own via
| copyright, and feed it to the AI as a prompt and receive a
| derivative of that image back, per this ruling I would not own
| the proceeds. It makes some sense-- an AI made it, and further, I
| did not produce enough instances of this art and the branding
| behind it for its likeness to be sufficiently "mine". I don't
| quite own the "mindshare", so people would not recognize the
| brand as being anybody's, really. So this is different from the
| way that Mickey Mouse is recognized.
|
| But what if a bunch of artists were to band together to create a
| license of sorts for the use of an AI they altogether build?
| Suppose they collectively own a portfolio of copyrighted
| materials, characters, etc, that they use to feed the AI.
| Wouldn't they own the proceeds of the likenesses produced by the
| AI, as would provide legal justification for their licensing of
| the AI, and to defend their collective works in the same way that
| Disney can?
| coolspot wrote:
| I believe what this ruling actually tries to defeat is an
| automated bulk art generation.
|
| Just fire some H100 in a loop iterating over various ~random
| prompts, save it all on a website and then sue anyone producing
| anything remotely similar.
|
| Problem is, bad actors will say all of this art was generated
| by a human with mere AI assistance.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I think it's the only logical assumption you can make when AI
| dide not request copyright clearance.
|
| Unless an AI generator proves it owns all related copyright
| material, how can it claim the output under the same law.
|
| It's basic CC ally a copyright blackhole. The laws of
| copyright doesn't survive.
| [deleted]
| juris wrote:
| God, I haven't even considered that. Design trolling! Prompt
| for an apple, iterate over all fashionable logo design
| styles, implicitly own the copyright all of them, then sit
| and wait. You're more likely to get a 'hit' as brand logos
| tend to be simple.
|
| I would imagine that context matters a lot in trademark law
| though, since there's a lot of namespace collision in
| trademark.
|
| Still not sure if this ruling is throwing the baby out with
| the bathwater. Just because a design is made by an AI doesn't
| necessarily mean that it's not 'owned'... but, heck maybe
| Disney is about to have a bad day. I can't say I hate it yet.
| >:D
| jy1 wrote:
| Imagine you're an human artist, and you painted Mickey Mouse
| (let say playing pickeball). Disney doesn't own the copyright
| to your artwork, but of course they own the copyright to
| _Mickey Mouse_ (the character), but that doesn't entitle them
| to all art with Mickey Mouse in it.
| juris wrote:
| I think it does though if you try to sell it... I mean Disney
| does occasionally go after artists selling baby yoda plushies
| that have been cropping up all over Etsy. Part of that is how
| busted copyright claims systems are, but they suuurely have
| some legal right to the likeness of yoda himself, especially
| in plushie context. Surely?
| swid wrote:
| My understanding is the ruling actually says the copyright cannot
| be granted to the AI. But that might not mean a human cannot
| claim copyright for AI art.
|
| Assuming the AI has a vast number of outputs, many which are
| uninteresting; a human can select a few outputs as being worthy
| of being called art or suitable for their purposes.
|
| So an AI can create an image, but the process of selection
| constitutes an editorial process, and a person can the claim
| copyright for images they generate and choose to distribute.
|
| This seems to be somewhat similar to copyrighting a found object
| as art, or taking a photo of a building and owning the copyright
| to that. It would not make sense to give the copyright to the
| camera, which is what this ruling confirms.
| sacado2 wrote:
| Editors do not own the copyright on the work they edited
| (unless the author explicitely licensed it, of course.)
| swid wrote:
| I guess I used the term inappropriately since the other
| commenter picked up on it as well, but I did compare it to
| deciding what to take a picture of as opposed to editing
| something written. There is some decision making and we don't
| award the copyright to the architect or camera, but the
| photographer.
| Detrytus wrote:
| The reasoning in the ruling is a bit different: copyright was
| invented to give humans a financial incentive to create art.
| Machines need no incentive, so they do not need copyright :)
|
| So, if the basic distinction here is:
|
| - if AI can create something all by itself, then it is not
| copyrightable (due to "machines need no incentive" rule)
|
| - if AI still needs human help, then it is just a tool (like a
| brush, or computer with Photoshop installed), and the human is
| the real author. It's not just about an "editorial process" -
| book editors do not have any copyright even after they fix
| hundreds of typos and grammar mistakes of the original author.
|
| Also, the plaintiff is making contradictory claims: when
| applying for copyright he said that AI was fully autonomous,
| but then, in the lawsuit he tries to change his story and say
| that his role in creating the piece of art was crucial.
| Probably just desperately fighting to make any money from this.
| westurner wrote:
| "[Art,] Copyrights cannot be assigned to the AI software a human
| used to create the work" which may or may not be sufficiently
| transformative, fair use, or apparently derivative
| karmakaze wrote:
| > For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt
| from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical
| works in response, the ''traditional elements of authorship'' are
| determined and executed by the technology--not the human user.
|
| This seems perhaps easy for the simplest cases, but what if the
| prompts get much longer? Where's the dividing line? Even in music
| production, the machine can be instructed to generate a semi-
| random-sequence following some loose constraints, would trying a
| bunch and selecting one be authorship, why? What if this is
| repeated for several parts? Again, where's the dividing line?
| b3morales wrote:
| I'm still not sure how I feel about the actual copyright issue,
| but this was a bad test case. Thaler is trying to have his cake
| and eat it too; his position is inconsistent (this similar to a
| previous comment I've made:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34783707).
|
| He wants credit for creating the AI, and he wants to that AI to
| be recognized as autonomous and independent by getting the
| Copyright Office's imprimatur. But at the same time he wants to
| treat the art created by the AI as if it were his, or at least to
| act on behalf of the AI as if it were _not_ autonomous.
| barnabee wrote:
| > Giving prompts to AI not enough for human authorship
|
| If, as some predict, everything is soon done by people feeding
| prompts to AI, a great bonus would be if it all became
| uncopyrightable.
|
| Shame neither is really going to happen.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Fine, I'll crop it and copyright that instead.
| sacado2 wrote:
| Let's pretend you can. What would be the point? I'll crop it
| slightly differently, and copyright it too.
| jtode wrote:
| There are rational people in the system still. Good to see.
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