[quadragenarian]

Wait just so i understand it, if a single human creates an AI model and trains it, and then prompts it to create an image, is that considered "human intervention" and does that make that human the author of that image?

What if its a group of 5 humans that built the LLM and one of them prompts it?

Isn't all AI built by some of group of humans? When is AI treated like its own entity like a monkey versus a tool made by a human?

[dragonwriter]

> Wait just so i understand it, if a single human creates an AI model and trains it, and then prompts it to create an image, is that considered "human intervention" and does that make that human the author of that image?

No, you misunderstand. The human involved is explicitly claiming the work was entirely AI authored, and that it should be given a copyright registration with the AI as the author.

The human is not claiming that they should get a copyright as the author for the reasons you describe. Had the human claimed authorship, the results of the case might have been very different. This case seems to have been engineered to lose for publicity, rather than being a serious attempt to secure copyright on the work.

[elicksaur]

Exactly.

We really need a human-human dispute where human A used AI to make a work and claims copyright and human B disputes the copyright. That’s the kind of case that would get into the standards for necessary human input.

Not sure if anything like that’s been filed yet.

[parsimo2010]

I think in later cases we'll get some tests to apply about how much human intervention is required.

Who trained the LLM is probably not the issue, the courts would likely want to know about the training material. If I trained a model exclusively on Warhol art, and then had that model create new images in Warhol's style, I didn't do any of the creative work and probably don't get the copyright. Warhol's estate probably owns the copyright to the model generated images as they are derivative works.

I do think that a model trained on many different artists' works, with me providing substantial feedback to the model (and I can show the process), probably will at some point give me the copyright.

Somewhere there is a line:

- "Make a picture of a mouse." Probably not giving you copyright

- Using a model to erase a powerline in a photograph you took. Probably you own the copyright to the original image and the one without a powerline in it (regardless of how many other people's images the model was trained on).

- "Make a picture of a mouse, who is bipedal, wearing pink shorts, with a chip in his ear, wearing sunglasses, with scruffy whiskers, holding a surfboard, on his way to the beach to hit some waves." then updating with "make him shorter, give him blue sneakers" and then updating with numerous other tweaks until you get it just the way you want. Who knows where this lands?

I think that in the short term the courts are going to land on the side of "anything made by a model trained on existing artwork is derivative of the training set so you can't own the copyright, no matter how much you tweak it." I think eventually the courts will recognize there is some amount of input that makes the computer image the realization of a vision in your head, and not a derivative of the training set. Just how every individual musical note has been played before, but at some point, you put them together in an arrangement that is original.

[randomNumber7]

> If I trained a model exclusively on Warhol art, and then had that model create new images in Warhol's style, I didn't do any of the creative work and probably don't get the copyright.

If I watch exclusively Warhol images for years and then paint something similar I get copyright.

There needs to be a gray are, because usually art is not done in a vacuum?

[parsimo2010]

> If I watch exclusively Warhol images for years and then paint something similar I get copyright.

Not necessarily. If you copy one of Warhol's works but "change it a little" then that is a derivative work, and the copyright belongs to Warhol's estate. Depending on how close of a copy it is, you would have a tough time defending your claim to copyright in court. The advantage an offending artist has in court is that they can claim "inspiration" as long as they don't admit to copying.

For a computer model the difference maker is that the court can probably obtain records of a training set, so if the training set is exclusively Warhol works it is probably easy to get a court to side on "derivative" and assume the computer does not possess inspiration.

Courts have basically baked in "gray areas" in copyright cases. The historical copyright tests are all written as to sound like mathematical formulas but everything is kind of subjective.

[wruza]

You also cannot train only on Warhol imagery, unless he drew billions of pics. So this is hypothetical “if”. In reality you finetune an existing network based on a dataset much larger than Warhol’s.

[radlad]

I also wonder this. I can write instructions to draw an image on the screen using OpenGL - or I can write an LLM and prompt it to draw an image. Why should I get authorship rights in one case but not the other?

[acchow]

> Wait just so i understand it, if a single human creates an AI model and trains it, and then prompts it to create an image, is that considered "human intervention" and does that make that human the author of that image?

I guess we will see when this gets tested in court. This current case linked to in the original article does not address this since the plaintiff already waived their own right to copyright already before copyright office.

There are 3 scenarios:

1) The AI should be the copyright holder (this judgement says NO).

2) If not 1 then the human should be the copyright holder via work-for-hire (this judgement says NO).

3) Human should be the copyright holder because they're the only human involved in the authoring (this lawsuit does not address this since direct copyright claims had already been waived).

[wildzzz]

I would assume that whomever prompts the AI is the author of the work. Adobe or Dell doesn't get to claim ownership to your work just because they made the tool or computer.

[quadragenarian]

That makes sense to me, and good point about Adobe/Dell.

So then any AI would not create art spontaneously right? It would always require a user to prompt it in some way. So wouldn't it be correct to say that all AI art is actually be authored by a human and as such copyrighted to that human?

[jonathanstrange]

Copyright covers the prompt, it's not even clear why it should be relevant for the output of the AI software based on that prompt.

[spyder]

That's like saying copyright covers the mouse clicks and mouse movements in Photoshop but not the output pixels.

[jonathanstrange]

You might find that strange and disagree with it with a flawed analogy but I've merely reported the official stance of the US Copyright Office and legal precedents. See, for instance, this overview with further references:

https://www.sidley.com/en/insights/newsupdates/2025/02/us-co...

"Prompts Are Generally Insufficient to Make AI Output Copyrightable"

If you don't trust this summary, read the US Copyright Office report for yourself. The gist of the position is that prompts are not specific enough and do not lead to deterministic output.

On a side note, I find it weird that even on HN people automatically assume you're only expressing a personal opinion, yet in all fairness I should have included some references from the start.

[petee]

If the output always changes for the same input prompt, did you really author anything?

[nickthegreek]

It wouldn’t change on the same seed, same hardware and identical settings

[mitthrowaway2]

> if a single human creates an AI model and trains it

... on only their own artwork?

[tonyhart7]

Yeah, but this is legal loophole start

how can you prove that this is my artwork not yours???