[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.