[mkreis]

> By using the Services, you grant to VectorArt.ai, its successors, and assigns a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicensable, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and/or distribute text prompts and images you input into the Services, or Assets produced by the Service at your direction.

-> even to images I upload? This is a no go. As a paid subscriber, I would expect to a) not automatically give a license for everything I UPLOAD B) not automatically give a license for content I created myself

[jahewson]

Yeah this is excessive in the extreme. Wave goodbye to your copyright if you upload images to this service.

The other thing is that they want you to pay to use the generated images commercially - but (as far as we know) purely AI generated images are not subject to copyright, so such licensing restrictions can’t exist.

[4death4]

The images themselves may not be subject to copyright, but you can still enter into a contract that says you won’t use generated images without paying for them.

[jahewson]

You can’t because copyright law supersedes contract law and copyright law states that such rights are exclusive - thus contract law cannot be used to usurp or invent a copying restriction. Licensing is the exclusive right of the copyright owner and when no copyright exists there can be no license (or de facto equivalent).

[4death4]

It’s not a copyright restriction. It’s a restriction on using the service.

[jahewson]

It’s not though, it’s a restriction on using the material produced by the service. Any contract terms regarding such are superseded by copyright law - the only rights belonging to the owner are those granted by copyright law and the only restrictions that may be placed are those that copyright law permits.

[4death4]

No, the rights are not superseded by copyright law. Why do you think that? Your agreement with the service provider is just like any other contractual agreement. Should you use one of the generated images (that you generated and used outside the terms of your agreement), you would not be sued for copyright infringement. You would be sued for breach of contract.

What you're saying is akin to signing an NDA, violating it, and then saying your First Amendment right supersedes the NDA. It doesn't.

[alexchamberlain]

> purely AI generated images are not subject to copyright, so such licensing restrictions can’t exist.

This doesn't feel right, similar to how it doesn't feel right that the companies are hoovering up copyrighted data. The company has invested in creating a cool product here, and it's reasonable for them to be able to license that work when used commercially.

[free_bip]

They created a product and they definitely have copyright over that product.

However, what the product is creating, the output, is an AI generated Image... Which because it wasn't human authored, is automatically put into the public domain the moment it's created.

The product is copyrighted, the output is not.

[tensor]

I really don't think this has been legally established, especially not in the case that AI is being used in conjunction with a copyright base image that it uses as a scaffold. It's incredibly hard to see the result as anything but a derived work of the original and being copyright by the author of the original in a similar way to applying a digital filter would.

The courts will sort out the boundaries of copyright here, but I'll eat my shorts if it's as extreme as the "all things that come out of AI are public domain" crowd thinks.

[swatcoder]

The gist of guidance from the US Copyright Office is that it's relative to what was put in.

If your input was a six word prompt of everyday langhage and the widely available magic box decompressed that into a cool picture, nobody produced anything copyrightable. And most of us wouldn't want that to be different. You'd just have squatters racing to claim copyright over every Midjourney prompt they can generate.

But if someone put what's clearly a demonstrably significant amount of commercial direction or artisanal effort into producing a original work while using generative tools, that direction/effort is what earns your copyright. The same would likely apply when using the tech to further "work" some already-copyrighted material of your own.

You're right that most of this stuff hasn't been tested by the courts when the tools are called "AI", but many of the underlying questions have decades and decades of precedent behind them (music sampling, collage and assemblage in visual art, monkeys taking snapshots, etc). Regulators do and lawyers will be making their cases about AI copyright in reference to those earlier, analogous, cases.

[jahewson]

Yes, the “copyright base image that it uses as a scaffold” case is special and I agree that we’ve not seen the conclusion there yet. Though, it must be said that I’d expect to the extent that such copyright exists it’s going to belong to the original image author, not the model creator/user.

[jahewson]

I actually agree that it feels weird but you can’t license something you don’t own and copyright law supersedes contract law.

[amluto]

How would VectorArt.ai even believe that their user has the rights to do so? If (for example) I upload some stock photo off the Internet, I absolutely do not have the right to grant such a license.

[colejohnson66]

They don’t. It’s a CYA in case they’re sued. If/when that happens, they can point the finger at you the uploader.

[tm11zz]

Thanks for surfacing this. I'll work to improve this to reflect reality - your prompts and images are private and owned by you.

[graypegg]

Reality is whatever is in your terms of use agreement. Who wrote it?

[waihtis]

AI, of course

[graypegg]

Haha, I wonder if we’re ever going to see a litigation over a EULA, where the service provider is trying to nullify some duty based on the fact they used AI to write the agreement which swapped Provider and User in a sentence.

Great era to be EULA hunting!

[yjftsjthsd-h]

I'm sure it will happen. However, I'm also fairly confident that whoever is the first to try it will be ripped to shreds by the judge:)

[quickthrower2]

Those AI lawyers play hardball

[leptons]

Yet this is essentially the same kind of license Facebook has when you upload any image to Facebook. And billions of people still upload content to them every day.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

Key difference that you don't have to pay a monthly subscription to use FB