[mjr00]

> I have come to the conclusion that that almost every work created by an AI tool should be copyrightable, even without the iterative refinement and post-processing that Kris performed. The more I search, the more I see similarities with photography and the long copyright battles over what minimum amount of creativity is needed to support the copyright in a photograph.

I think this is shortsighted; this opens up a space for "AI copyright trolls" who generate images for popular prompts in an automated fashion to get copyright, then go after people using AI art who happened to hit the same seed and prompt. Admittedly unlikely, but it could happen, and might eventually even be worth the GPU time depending on how popular AI artwork becomes (and how fast GPUs get).

In any case, I don't see why the unaltered, or in this case extremely minorly altered, image output itself should be copyrightable. It's like two people going to Venice Beach to record the waves at the same time. They each have copyright over their specific recordings, but they can't copyright the sounds of the waves itself; the other person is free to do what they want with their own recording of the same sound. The same way that if you generate a Midjourney image with a specific prompt/seed, I should be able to use the same settings to generate the same image and do what I want with it.

[aiappreciator]

Is a photograph of a painting itself copyrighted? Img2img or controlnet can basically do that, in less than 30 seconds.

Even as someone extremely pro-AI art, I don't think AI-generated content should have copyright in the usual sense. Every art model was trained on massive amounts of copyrighted data, it would be very hypocritical to suddenly claim strong copyright on the output of AI generated items.

I think AI generated copyright should be 'pay-to-register', people can pay say $5 per image to register their image, if they believe it to be valuable enough to be copyrighted. In this sense, its more like trademarks, rather than the automatic moral right of copyright.

Your average AI art (which is worthless) will not be copyrighted. The ones with significant amounts of attention, post-editing, and economic value, the AI artist can simply register at the copyright office.

The extra funding for the copyright office, will also give them more staffing to deal with the torrential tide of AI-related copyright issues, and encourage them to build a healthy ecosystem where manual art and AI art co-exists.

[autoexec]

> The ones with significant amounts of attention, post-editing, and economic value, the AI artist can simply register at the copyright office.

Even leaving aside that some people think coming up a prompt or choosing from multiple generated images is itself work enough to justify copyright you'll have so many very similar images registered that copyright trolls could still intimidate people into forking over settlement money and people would still argue that even the smallest changes (say to brightness level/saturation) justifies their copyright.

Leaving AI generated works free from copyright would be ideal, since it'd free those images for others to build off of and remix and reuse in new ways, it encourages commercial projects to hire human artists so that they can gain the protection of copyright, and it doesn't stop anyone from doing what they want with the technology. Comic book authors who illustrate their work using AI can still copyright their stories, trademark their characters, etc.

[aiappreciator]

"it encourages commercial projects to hire human artists so that they can gain the protection of copyright"

How is this relevant to AI copyright?

If AI art is copyrightable, they'd still need someone to generate the AI art. That person is an 'artist' in the legal sense, regardless if they can draw or not. If AI art is not copyrightable, they can still hire a non-artist (fully outsourcable), to do some minor post-editing of the AI art, and copyright it.

[autoexec]

> If AI art is not copyrightable, they can still hire a non-artist (fully outsourcable), to do some minor post-editing of the AI art, and copyright it.

I'm arguing that they shouldn't be able to do that either. If a company wants to create something protected by copyright they should hire a human to do it. If they don't care about the copyright, then they can take advantage of AI generated art and everyone else can use the result for whatever they want. It makes it easy. If an AI made it, no copyright. If a human made it, copyright. There's no bickering over whether or not someone spent enough time post-editing or coming up with the perfect prompt. Artists stay employable, more artistic works gets into the public domain and there are no restrictions on how AI generated art can be used and no opportunity for copyright trolls to abuse the system. Everybody wins.

[jay_kyburz]

> "it encourages commercial projects to hire human artists so that they can gain the protection of copyright"

Nobody will ever know if a human was involved or not.

[autoexec]

That is kind of a problem if companies are fine with lying, or hiring an artist willing to lie and claim they created something, just to get copyright protection. I can't say for sure that we'll have (or always have) some means of telling if something was created by AI or not.

Removing AI generated works from copyright entirely means that if you can demonstrate your work was created by AI you wouldn't have to worry that it violates someone else's copyright. People would be free to use the technology for whatever they wanted as long as they were willing to give up the idea of copyrighting whatever the output was.

[ROTMetro]

You have to list the specific artist(s) on the copyright. Is someone really interested in lying in Federal paperwork for minimal return? Risk/reward ratio on the specific individual(s) who claim to be the artist seems to not be worth it. This isn't a case of limited liability protection hiding behind the 'personhood' of a company but an individual that has to personally claim to be the artist. A company can't claim to be the artist for purpose of copyright, but instead get's the artist rights assigned to them later.

[autoexec]

If a company can make money by doing something, legal or not, we should assume that they will always do that thing. If the penalty for lying about how a work was produced is less than the money a company will make or can protect by illegally enforcing a copyright we should expect them to lie. I'm sure plenty of people would take a steady paycheck for the risk of a lawsuit if the company assures them they'll do everything to protect them.

Companies have repeatedly been caught suing people for violations of copyrights they didn't actually own while paying zero consequences for it once they were caught. For examples see https://www.techdirt.com/2020/03/26/riaa-realizes-it-sued-ch... and https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/03/viacom_v_youtu...)

I'm not saying this is an unsolvable problem, but it will take actually imposing severe and meaningful consequences for companies who lie.

[jay_kyburz]

I was thinking more from the perspective of a copyright infringer. You can't safely go ahead rip images from somebody else and use them in your own products because you can't know if they are protected or not. You don't have to declare copyright to be protected by it.

It's really not helpful to try and define what is an AI image and what is not. What if an artist repaints the background, or photoshops out an extra finger, or just re-colors some icons.

Whats different about using text in Midjourny and a brush in photoshop. What about if you use both on every image?

[autoexec]

> I was thinking more from the perspective of a copyright infringer.

When using AI generated images no one should be an infringer since copyright shouldn't apply to AI's output. People should be able to use AI generated images already created without fear of infringement, but you're right in that it requires you to be able to identify a work as being AI generated. Edit's to an AI generated image shouldn't make it copyrightable so photoshops and recolors wouldn't matter, but repainting an AI generated image entirely by hand could arguably give an artist the ability to copyright the specific reproduction, to the extent that if I repainted the Mona Lisa by hand I should have copyright protection for my re-painting.

The difference between using Midjourny to create an image and using a brush in photoshop is that the line generated by the brush tool in photoshop wasn't dependent on countless other copyrighted works while the image generated by Midjourny was.

Since copyrighted works were exploited in the creation of images created by Midjourny in a way that makes it impossible to credit or compensate the authors of those works we can resolve the issue entirely by preventing any of the art it creates from being protected by copyright. Artists whose work was used to train AI can rest assured that no one is exclusively profiting off of their work without compensation. The sum of all art created by human hands throughout history goes in, art free for all of humanity to use without restriction comes out.

Anyone can use both Midjourny and photoshop to make an image but the resulting image wouldn't be able to have copyright protection, still, the image wouldn't be at risk of being accused of copyright infringement either. That frees everyone to use the powerful new AI technology to create artistic works without fear, but also without the protection of copyright.

Once again though, that'd require us know when an image was generated by AI even if edits were later made after the fact which may or may not be possible causing some people to get protection for works when they shouldn't, but even that would mean people who could prove their works were AI generated would be safe from being accused of infringement which solves one the big legal problems AI images have caused currently.

[jay_kyburz]

>I think AI generated copyright should be 'pay-to-register', people can pay say $5 per image to register their image, if they believe it to be valuable enough to be copyrighted. In this sense, its more like trademarks, rather than the automatic moral right of copyright.

I like this idea so much, it should be extended to all copyright.

Not only does it make very clear when something was "published", we could have a central repository of copyrighted works you could search and review.

All work published after 2025 is public domain unless resisted with the global copyright office.

[VanL]

A photo that tries to capture an existing painting as closely as possible is not copyrightable.

However, even minor changes (such as changing the tint of the photo) have been found to be enough for copyrightability.

[aiappreciator]

AI is far more productive, and easier in modifying source pictures, than photography. Controlnet is not a mere tint, it can generate 20 artstyle variations of the source image in 30 seconds. No artist will have any income if this those AI outputs are copyrightable without cost.

I don't think past-decisions are that important here. There'll definitely be new laws around AI generated content, that set clear standards. Those standards have to consider the social impact of copyright and the livelihood of artists. The whole point of copyright is not some abstract golden moral standard, but something that keeps artists and writers employed.

That's why I think pay-for-copyright is the best balance in terms of liberty for AI art but preserving the incomes of traditional artists.

[orbital-decay]

This is the same as saying that the generative art (which has been a thing for decades) provides infinite variation. This is only technically true: the "infinite" variations of the procedurally generated art are all constrained by the original creator's intent, which is exactly what gives such art value.

The generative art is not set in fixed pixels, but instead is represented in a fuzzy form (equations, algorithms etc) that slightly varies each time you look at it. The value of it is also constrained by the author's intent and work. Only humans can be subject to copyright, so it at least makes common (if not legal) sense.

ML models are the same as the generative art that previously existed - they only add the captured essence of the prior data to the mix of human artistic intent and hard algorithms.

[tylersmith]

What is the value of artists having incomes if the same art can be generated instead?

[ROTMetro]

Actually this is still in debate with the whole Warhol Prince pictures thing, but should be ruled on this early this year.

[shagie]

Yes, a photograph of a painting is copyrighted, but it is also a derivative work.

If you want to read more about, it I recommend Legal Handbook for Photographers ( https://www.amazon.com/Legal-Handbook-Photographers-Rights-L... ) and note that this isn't just a random person writing a book...

> Bert P. Krages, Esq., is an attorney who specializes in intellectual property. He is the author of "Handbook for Photographers" and "Heavenly Bodies "and Photography: The Art of Composition"

---

Registering works is "pay to register" and has been for some time. Though you can do it in bulk.

https://www.copyright.gov/registration/visual-arts/

---

My takes on your examples:

Img2img : The AI created art is a derivative work of the source image. By itself it is not copyrightable as there is no human creativity at work.

Txt2img : The text prompt is copyrightable, though that's rather boring. The AI art generated by it is a derivative work of the text prompt and is not copyrightable.

Post processing : Just as DuChamp's L.H.O.O.Q. was copyrightable in its day and the source material for it was not (the work of an old master), so to the human modified image that was original AI (and uncopyrightable) is now a work that can be copyrighted.

Note that these are my interpretation of current copyright law and (to me) seem rather reasonable. See https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-... sections 306, and 313.2. Changing this is a change in the law (e.g. need congress to do it) rather than a change in how the copyright office interprets the law.

Copyright office funding : https://www.copyright.gov/about/budget/2022/house-budget-tes... aside from managing the capital request to implement the CASE act, they are already pretty much self funded from royalties and fees.

Consider also the painting "Edmond de Belamy" and the surrounding debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_de_Belamy . While this isn't the final say, you can be sure that lawyers have looked at it - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edmond_de_Belamy.png and note the licensing section and its link to the UK copyright office - https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/artificial-intel... ... and that copyright in the UK is based on sweat of the brow (which was rejected with Feist v. Rural Telephone Service in 1991 in the US to instead apply original works of authorship)

[gwern]

> I think this is shortsighted; this opens up a space for "AI copyright trolls" who generate images for popular prompts in an automated fashion to get copyright, then go after people using AI art who happened to hit the same seed and prompt.

That seems extremely unlikely to make any sense given that the random seeds in question would be, what, FP32 or FP64 by default? So that's 4 billion random seeds per prompt. Better hope your GPUs are really cheap and you're targeting a really popular prompt+model+everything-else...

[wokwokwok]

Yes, but that’s the point isn’t it?

Why not copyright them all?

Sure, it’s irritating, and troll behaviour; but that’s literally what patent trolls do right?

[gwern]

No, the point is to make money.

[rcme]

The USCO also gave their justification: not enough human input in the process of creation to justify a copyright. After all, what is the point of copyright? To protect the interest of human creators. Human creators get exclusivity on their own ideas in exchange for sharing them with the world. This deal breaks down if there is no effort involved in creating the works.

[jay_kyburz]

As a technical artists, dabbling with AI, I can tell you that it takes a lot of time an effort to generate prompts, asses the quality of the generated images, curate collections of images to be in the same art style. I haven't even started trying to work out how to get the same characters in different pictures.

If I wanted the look of my product to be "ball point pen on post-it note" it would have been a lot less work and effort and it would get copyright protection.

Effort is the wrong measure.

[csnover]

> After all, what is the point of copyright? To protect the interest of human creators.

Sorry if I’ve missed your point here, but the purpose of copyright in the United States, as written in its constitution, is to promote the progress of science and useful arts[0], not to protect the interests of creators. The exclusive license to creators is a means to an end.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...

[rcme]

> The Congress shall have Power [...] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

That sounds like protecting the interests of human creators so they keep creating, to me at least.

[hatsunearu]

I think someone made an automated database of musical riffs of a certain length--all possible riffs. And put it on a hard drive.

AFAIK the opinion was that that doesn't count as copyrightable art.

[gnopgnip]

Copyright doesn't prevent independent creation. Two people can take photos of Venice Beach at the same time, and neither is infringing.