[stavros]

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?

[margalabargala]

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.

[dathinab]

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).

[rickydroll]

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]

A human couldn't recreate it perfectly in a different medium, thus you are adding human creativity to it, thus copyrightable.

[rickydroll]

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]

Why wouldn’t that be the case? Each performance of a song is uniquely copyrightable.