[HN Gopher] AI-generated art can't be copyrighted after Supreme ...
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AI-generated art can't be copyrighted after Supreme Court declines
review
Author : duggan
Score : 152 points
Date : 2026-03-03 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| hermannj314 wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| dathinab wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| Those 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.
| alistairSH wrote:
| But how does that apply to photography vs AI photo
| generation?
|
| Photo (w/ camera): 1. MET: Human authorship - somebody picked
| the tools (lens, body) and used them.
|
| 2. MET: Creativity - somebody chose a subject, lighting, etc.
|
| 3. MET: Fixation - film (or SD card)
|
| Photo (w/ AI): 1. MET: Human authorship - somebody picked the
| tools (models etc) and used them.
|
| 2. MET, maybe?: Creativity - somebody wrote the prompt,
| provided inputs, etc. (how is this substantially different
| than my wife taking a random snapshot on her phone?)
|
| 3. MET: Written to disk, same as a digital camera.
| filoleg wrote:
| The camera analogy breaks at one specific point: who
| determines the expressive elements of the final work.
|
| With photography, the human determines framing, angle,
| timing, lens, exposure. The camera just records light from
| a scene the human selected and composed. Even a random
| photo reflects where the photographer stood and when they
| pressed the shutter. The device doesn't invent the
| composition.
|
| With AI imagen, the user provides high-level instructions,
| but the system determines the actual composition, lighting,
| geometry, textures, etc. The expressive details of the
| final image are generated by the model, not directly
| controlled by the user.
|
| That's why the US copyright laws currently treat them
| differently. It is less of a "tool vs. tool", and more of
| whether the human determined the expressive content (or if
| the system did). Prompting can be creative (in a legal
| sense), but giving instructions is not the same as
| controlling the expression.
|
| If I tell a human painter "paint XYZ in an expressionist
| style," I don't become the author of the painting. The
| painter does, because they determined the expression. And
| since the painter (in the case of AI imagen) is not a
| human, then that work usually cannot be copyrighted.
|
| There is an important caveat to all of this: it's not
| binary or perfectly clear-cut. If someone iteratively
| refines prompts, controls seeds, manually inpaints, selects
| and arranges outputs, heavily edits the result, etc., then
| those human contributions can be protected. But purely AI-
| generated output, where the system determines the
| expressive elements, is not considered human-authored under
| the current US copyright laws.
|
| Mind you, none of this is perfectly settled, as this is a
| very rapidly evolving/adapting area of law (as it pertains
| to AI usage). I am not claiming that this is the end-all of
| how it should be legislated or that there are no ways to
| improve it. But the current reasoning within the US
| copyright law used to address this type of a scenario (at
| the present moment) doesn't strike me as illogical or
| unreasonable.
| stavros wrote:
| AI-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 wrote:
| most 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 wrote:
| They 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| A human couldn't recreate it perfectly in a different medium,
| thus you are adding human creativity to it, thus
| copyrightable.
| rickydroll wrote:
| A photograph or a tracing made with an optical device is a
| mechanical reproduction of the original work, but it has
| its own copyright because there's a human in the loop.
|
| A forger takes skill and creativity to make a copy of an
| existing work that is so good it cannot be distinguished
| from the original. By your assertion, the forgery should
| have its own independent copyright.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Why wouldn't that be the case? Each performance of a song
| is uniquely copyrightable.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Why 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 wrote:
| No-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 wrote:
| it'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.
| dathinab wrote:
| Long 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Claiming that you digitally painted it? (Fraud?)
|
| I mean, I guess lying is something you could do.
| reactordev wrote:
| A 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.
| harrall wrote:
| Yeah but it's super obvious when you pick it up so I don't
| know if I would consider it lying.
| malfist wrote:
| An easily recognizable lie is still a lie.
| youknownothing wrote:
| Photography 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.
| kderbyma wrote:
| Tell me you cant take good photos without telling me you
| cant take good photos. Photographers have the skill of
| colour, framing, perspective, and timing.... and if its
| nature, they also have to carry heavy bags of camera gear
| along with their hiking gear and bear spray etc and go out
| and then cpture photos....national geographic literally
| made its career off photos.....do you think about what
| orher weird takes you may have and never notice how wrong
| they are?
| IsTom wrote:
| It's not copyrightable automatically, you have to argue
| that you did have an artistic input (e.g. composition).
| Typically nobody bothers to argue against copyrightability
| of a photo, but there's been a few cases.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Do you know of any sources that talk about this? I tried
| to do a bit of searching and the closest I found was the
| .gov site [0] that did make a similar-ish claim, but was
| vague enough (at least to me, a non-lawyer), that it
| doesn't seem to rule out that every photo taken by an
| individual is copywriteable
|
| >First, copyright protects original works of authorship,
| including original photographs. A work is original if it
| is independently created and is sufficiently creative.
| Creativity in photography can be found in a variety of
| ways and reflect the photographer's artistic choices like
| the angle and position of subject(s) in the photograph,
| lighting, and timing.
|
| I find it hard to imagine a photo taken by someone where
| it _couldn 't_ be argued that those elements exist. I
| guess the photographer would have to explicitly tell the
| court something like "no, I put no thought into it
| whatsoever, the camera was hanging off my bag and the
| shutter button was pressed accidentally". Like, if a
| human purposefully took a photo, then they have made
| choices about location, subject, etc. which have some
| element of "creativity" to them.
|
| [0] https://www.copyright.gov/engage/photographers/
| IsTom wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannion_v._Coors_Brewing_Co
| .
|
| I remember there being a somewhat similar case in (I
| think?) Netherlands a few years ago, but currently can't
| find it.
| card_zero wrote:
| There's the monkey selfie incident.
| the-wouter wrote:
| I know this isn't the case you are referring to, but I am
| pretty sure cases like this exist more often. This is one
| of such cases I have in my notes: https://deeplink.rechts
| praak.nl/uitspraak?id=ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2...
|
| It's a simple and quite recent Dutch case (feel free to
| use AI to translate it :p), where the courts basically
| said that the plaintiff did not sufficiently motivate why
| their photo would be copyrighted, especially in light of
| very similar photos having been made by other people
| (4.5).
| nwellnhof wrote:
| Depends on the jurisdiction. In Germany, practically
| every photo is copyrightable.
| reactordev wrote:
| Bingo. If he was the creator and owner, it would have been
| fine.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Can you use "I believed this was AI generated" as a copyright
| defense now?
| furyofantares wrote:
| No? Just as you've never been able to use your ignorance as a
| defense?
| RavlaAlvar wrote:
| I wonder by that logic, can AI generated art violate other's
| copyright?
| dathinab wrote:
| AI 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 wrote:
| Exactly 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
| Pokemon 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 wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > spits out derivatives of the actual masters
|
| A brief history of art in general.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Sure, but at at least it's created by humans.
|
| I have an allegiance to humans. I have no allegiance to a
| computer program. That would be pathetic.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Let's say the AI prompt is "Make it black and white". Why
| does taking a photo and making it gray scale in photoshop
| result in a copyrightable piece of art, but using an AI model
| makes the resulting output slop? They seem equivalent to me.
| blackcatsec wrote:
| Because you're unable to understand art, honestly.
| Photography isn't just "taking a photo and making a
| grayscale image in Photoshop"; but rather a combination of
| a couple of different artistic expression styles that
| involve understanding how to use the tools you have (a
| camera, the lens, film or a sensor, and lighting) to
| capture an expression of an event. Technically speaking, a
| photo of a mountain isn't just a "photo of a mountain" that
| you would maybe throw into AI slop--but an actual,
| legitimate photo of a mountain and how it's captured and
| presented (no matter the post processing done) _is_ an
| actual artistic expression of the capture of that mountain.
| Because absolutely nothing, nothing at all will capture
| actually standing there looking at the mountain. A photo is
| the best approximation, and sometimes doesn 't even have to
| be, depending on what the artist wants to express with the
| image.
|
| In short, your inability to understand photography doesn't
| justify the use of AI slop to prompt "give me a grayscale
| image of a mountain" and assume that it's the same thing as
| a human being taking an actual photo. They're not even
| close to the same thing.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The original comment is asking from a legal perspective
| in a very specific example, not an emotional one.
| Ajakks wrote:
| They are describing the artistic qualities that something
| must posess to be actual artwork - which is relevant to
| copyrighting artworks, and is also that had been
| discussed, by Artists and Creators - the entire time
|
| They did not write an emotional comment, they were trying
| to teach you, bc they ascertained that you don't
| understand art.
|
| They were right.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >use of AI slop to prompt "give me a grayscale image of a
| mountain"
|
| That is not the prompt I included in my post. The prompt
| I gave was for taking an the same photo you would be
| putting into photoshop and using AI to apply grayscale.
| blackcatsec wrote:
| I'll distill it down into something you might understand a
| bit easier. On social media, such as Instagram, or Tiktok,
| you'll find a bit of a meme going around that shows the
| difference between an influencer video of a vacation
| destination and then a follow-up video from someone with
| their iPhone, often showing overcrowding of tourists, brown
| water where there was blue; with these videos often with a
| poor-sounding Recorder being played over them (I forget the
| song that it's attempting to play).
|
| The difference between the "real" video and the
| "influencer" video is the artistry from the artist(s)
| involved. (And yes, top influencers often have a person or
| a team of people involved)
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Is the Jurassic Park theme btw
| blackcatsec wrote:
| Thanks! That's one of them :) I had to look it up as it
| was bothering me. The other is "September" by Earth, Wind
| & Fire.
| tgv wrote:
| It's not about image modifications, it's about creation.
| Furthermore, half a similarity on a small aspect doesn't
| undermine the argument.
| vessenes wrote:
| Wait till you learn about comparator mirrors. And renaissance
| artist studios.
| Ajakks wrote:
| You clearly only get sloppy from the machine -> hence your
| entire understanding, you did some googling, found others
| with the same experience and you took up this position.
|
| Meanwhile, random person, gets the exact same AI that you
| used to create literal DaVinci'esque, visibly masterpiece
| inspired - maybe not "masterpiece" but "masterpiece adjacent"
| - thats apparently, its not perfect art, but it could have
| been created in a workshop...
|
| You can't do that. Rather, you cant nake the AI do that.
|
| What is the difference between you and the random person with
| artworks in the style of the old masters? What do we call
| that gap?
|
| Isn't that gap normally stuff like talent, ability, skill,
| knowledge?
|
| All arguments made in this vein are just people whining about
| their personal lack of ability, as if its a machines fault.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Thanks for the ad hominem. Subjective artistic value aside,
| do you not dispute that prompting AI to create an artistic
| image is functionally the same as outsourcing to another
| human? You input instructions and a commission fee; you get
| back a piece of artistic expression. You did not create the
| art, someone else did. And for AI output, the machine
| cannot claim a copyright on that original image.
|
| If you outsource the image creation, then throw it on a
| t-shirt design, or modify it, or do whatever, you can
| copyright the modified work that you Han a hand in
| creating, but you still are not the creator of the
| original.
| elil17 wrote:
| I don't think this is the correct interpretation. I think they
| mean that if you make something without AI and then modify that
| with AI, that's covered. Likewise, if you start from an AI
| output and modify it, that's covered.
|
| But the pure output of a generative model cannot be
| copyrighted, regardless of how complex the prompt is (note that
| the prompt itself could be copyrighted).
| thepasch wrote:
| > But the pure output of a generative model cannot be
| copyrighted, regardless of how complex the prompt is
|
| If that's how the court interpreted it, then the software
| industry is _hosed_ , since that'd mean none of the generated
| code running in production right now is under any sort of
| copyright or otherwise protection, lol.
| circuit10 wrote:
| I doubt that much software is entirely AI-generated with no
| human review or testing, it's probably more like
| integrating some public domain snippets you found online
| into your code (which doesn't invalidate copyright on the
| rest of it, or the way it's put together) or having some
| files auto-generated by a script (like a C header
| containing a lookup table for a simple mathematical
| function, the table isn't copyrightable itself maybe but
| the software as a whole still is)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Never mind that.
|
| If a deterministic machine transformation from a
| copyrightable prompt results in an uncopyrightable image,
| what do you think a compiler is doing to source code?
| compsciphd wrote:
| AI is not specifically not deterministic from the
| enduser's perspective. they throw randomness into it and
| hence why an exact prompt wont produce the same exact
| result.
|
| a compiler on the other hand is generally pretty
| deterministic. The non determinism that we see in output
| is usually non determinism (such as generated dates) in
| the code that it consumes.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If your argument is that compiler output is _more_
| deterministic than image generators, how does that help?
| compsciphd wrote:
| because they are just translating code (that everyone
| agrees is copyrightable) in a deterministic manner into
| another medium.
|
| I'm not saying AI art should or shouldn't be
| copyrightable. One can argue the inputs into the AI
| generator are copyrightable, but if the output isn't
| deterministic translation of the input, its a different
| argument.
| freejazz wrote:
| > human review or testing
|
| Review and testing do not confer a copyright the work
| reviewed or tested
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| "I can stop on an ant, and I can stomp on a flower, so
| _look out, elephants_ "
| JeremyNT wrote:
| I'm not sure this is really true, since copyright applies
| to distribution.
|
| If you have a substantial amount of backend code (as with
| most SaaS projects) you're never actually distributing the
| code, and copyright is never at play. Computer generated
| artifacts are already in this boat and are protected by
| virtue of being trade secrets not by copyright.
|
| This could maybe be true of shipping javascript to the
| browser, which presumably is not going to qualify as a
| trande secret, but I don't think that's where most
| companies derive value.
| freejazz wrote:
| >I'm not sure this is really true, since copyright
| applies to distribution.
|
| Do you mean that a work has to be published prior to
| registration? What do you mean by "copyright applies to
| distribution"?
| freejazz wrote:
| >If that's how the court interpreted it, then the software
| industry is hosed, since that'd mean none of the generated
| code running in production right now is under any sort of
| copyright or otherwise protection, lol.
|
| Correct, the jurisprudence there hasn't changed.
| vunderba wrote:
| This is how I understood the original decision a while back -
| that there had to be some additional element of human
| involvement post-"gen", though to what extent is still a bit
| unclear to me.
|
| What's the threshold? Can the person just slap an LUT on an
| SDXL image in Photoshop and call it a day?
| camillomiller wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| Absolute nonsense. A work of art is made of semantic
| stratification, experience, thought process. A prompt lacks all
| that. AI art can be a tool, but this sentence is a good
| reminder that on average it's worth shit all.
| rickydroll wrote:
| Don't forget that the human artist spends hours training on
| art that predates them, and, in my opinion, that training
| predisposes the artist to unconsciously replicate elements of
| art they've trained on previously.
| camillomiller wrote:
| Stop treating humans like machines. Stop normalizing this
| dehumanizing nonsense.
| rickydroll wrote:
| Am I treating humans like machines or machines like
| they're human?
|
| LLMs were created in our image. Hallucination,
| confabulation, sycophancy, psychopathy, learning,
| reasoning, and blackmail are all behaviours in LLMs that
| were first found in humans. All these behaviors are
| present in human writing and imagery captured in a
| training set. So to me, there's no surprise that LLMs
| exhibit these behaviors.
|
| Do I think LLMs are sentient or sapient? I'm in the
| probably not camp. We don't have a good test for either,
| but they do illustrate the resistance to acknowledging
| any other being or creation as having the same
| capabilities as Homo sapiens.
| tgv wrote:
| > A prompt can be a masterpiece.
|
| So the true Renaissance artists are the Medicis and the RC
| church?
|
| > how much creativity and effort
|
| So art is art prompting, or is it creativity and effort? If
| some toddler spends two hours on a drawing, it's a masterpiece?
|
| > AI can be used as another kind of brush.
|
| A simile does not a truth make.
| Ajakks wrote:
| Its interesting you mention a toddler drawing for 2 hours - I
| can say with certainty that toddler drawing will demonstrate
| more creativity than this argument and, every iteration of
| it, I see every single day. Smh
|
| Actual creators understand what creativity is and what
| creation is - not all creation even is creative, as its
| really more of a process, than it is a singular output, and
| there are monotonous, time consuming, meticulously
| frustrating parts of the process of creation.
|
| If you want to limit yourself to creation without the quality
| of life enhancements, that exist in this time and space - you
| do you.
|
| Don't proselytize tho - you are not doing what you think you
| are.
| freejazz wrote:
| > If some toddler spends two hours on a drawing, it's a
| masterpiece?
|
| A work doesn't have to be a masterpiece to obtain a copyright
| so what difference does it make? The point of copyright isn't
| to subjectively critique art.
| jeej wrote:
| > AI can be used as another kind of brush. A prompt can be a
| masterpiece.
|
| Sorry, but... cringe. If we are calling prompts "masterpieces"
| now - letting alone the image generated by it - maybe we don't
| deserve art at all.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>A prompt can be a masterpiece.
|
| I don't think that word means what you think it means.
|
| You have an extremely low bar for calling something a
| masterpiece.
|
| A prompt can be clever, insightful, unique, and even uniquely
| productive.
|
| But it is nowhere near the level of decades-deep skill and
| creative inspiration required to create art anything worthy of
| the label "masterpiece".
|
| >>AI can be used as another kind of brush
|
| Perhaps that is a valid analogy, but we do not give copyrights
| to brushes, no matter how much cost or effort was required to
| make the brush. The brush is not the only tool required to make
| the art. To continue the analogy, the artist must also select
| and mount the canvas, mix and color each shade of paint, build
| up the base layers, and on and on and on...
|
| It doesn't matter if your "brush" is a five hundred billion
| dollar machine and you spend six months whispering to it to
| find just the right incantation to generate your file of pixels
| -- SCOTUS is right, you have not make art to which you can
| claim a copyright.
|
| And the starving student artist in their garage mixing their
| paints and using the dollar-store brush did make art worthy of
| a copyright claim.
| ottah wrote:
| The outputs of a camera 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 photographic image, or a human makes
| creative arrangements or modifications of the image, but not
| the mere pointing of a lens and adjustment of setting.
| array_key_first wrote:
| > a prompt can be a masterpiece.
|
| Then copywrite the prompt, that's always been allowed. Should
| be just as good if that's the true masterpiece.
|
| Or, as I think we all know, it's not. It's merely a commission,
| the product is the output. Not the prompt.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| AI grifters, new 'prompt copywriting' billable service
| opportunity just dropped.
| thedangler wrote:
| does that mean movies with AI generated art can be repackaged and
| sold by anyone?
| layer8 wrote:
| Only if they don't have "substantial human authorship".
| kirykl wrote:
| Add a single pixel manually
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| You then own the copyright _on that pixel_.
| layer8 wrote:
| That probably wouldn't count as "substantial human authorship".
| simonw wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| It doesn't really matter as long as you keep physical control
| of the code and don't let others copy it.
| beej71 wrote:
| Nor 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 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| > 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. ;)
| sowbug wrote:
| That would effectively rely on the doctrine of trade secret
| rather than copyright. A major difference is that accidental
| or malicious disclosure of a trade secret usually ends the
| trade secret status, forever. In an alternate universe where
| computer source code had never been copyrightable, famous
| leaks (Microsoft Windows, 2004; id Quake, 1997) would have
| effectively open-sourced those codebases, and other companies
| could have openly and legally used them.
|
| As source code becomes more of a generated artifact of
| software development the way object code is an artifact of
| compilation, we might be moving toward a world where secrecy,
| constant forward motion, and moats become even more of an
| asset (vs plain IP protection).
| asacrowflies wrote:
| So I can reverse engineer in peace without Nintendo ninjas
| lawyers coming after me?
| layer8 wrote:
| I would assume that the same "substantial human authorship"
| criterion applies. Copyright is about human creativity, it
| doesn't otherwise matter if something is art, prose,
| typesetting, or code.
| teeray wrote:
| Can you imagine the chaos if suddenly all the slop code wasn't
| owned by the company? Even though that result would be
| consistent with this ruling, it undermines the narrative the
| economy is now riding on, so there will likely be special
| exemption.
| ben_w wrote:
| Perhaps. Even that may not be important if the METR progress
| line continues much longer, because then all those billion
| dollars "worth" of software written over the past 3-ish years
| get re-invented for cents on the dollar.
|
| Separately, I think code is more like an invention than a work
| of art, and should have been subject only to patent laws
| instead of (and not in addition to!) copyright laws. This
| doesn't really make much difference now, as AI doesn't (at
| least in the UK) have personhood for either copyright or patent
| law: https://www.briffa.com/blog/can-you-obtain-a-patent-for-
| inve...
| keeda wrote:
| For many, many reasons, I suspect patents will become much more
| important now. After all, it's the ideas that matter now. Which
| I maintain, has always been the case, because "execution" is
| nothing more than a series of smaller ideas, except those
| typically needed money. How convenient for those with capital!
|
| Patents have the drawback of being expensive and very slow to
| acquire, but having worked on a bunch, they are uniquely suited
| to be radically optimized by GenAI.
|
| Also patents are very flawed in practice, but the only real
| protection that is left. Copyright is meaningless when, as
| people have done, you can reproduce entire saas products by
| feeding AI screenshots.
|
| Intellectual Property as a whole has been in need for a revamp
| for a while now, but it's even more critical in the age of AI.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Patents are what allowed the industrial revolution to happen.
| No one is bringing a cotton gin from idea to design to
| manufacturing to market if the second you release it every
| manufacturing company in the world can start making their
| won.
| owenpalmer wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| [dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47223022
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I 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-
| 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 wrote:
| Every 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 wrote:
| Unpopular 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-conside...
|
| - 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 wrote:
| What happens with software now?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Note 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.
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