AI-generated art can't be copyrighted, federal judge rules, with potential consequences for Hollywood studios

nous , 10 months ago

All these articles seem to refer to the Thaler v. Perlmutter case. Which did not conclude that AI-genreted art cannot be copyrighted. It concluded that AI art generated without any human involvement cannot be copyrighted. Which is a big difference.

IMO a far more damning case is Zarya of the Dawn copyright claim that was rejected by the copyright offices. (Not sure if this case was contested in court). This one explicitly states that prompts used to generate AI images are not a good enough for a copyright claim as the output of the AI generator is not predictable and it can easily generate things you did not intend even if it is guided by your prompt. So they are more suggestions and not influential enough for a claim to copyright.

That is far more damning than what the case this article is talking about. But that is just what the copyright office says, not what judges have ruled on yet.

MonkCanatella , 10 months ago

yeah thinking a little past the headline’s sensational title, it makes you wonder what would be the case for folks who used ai plugins in music production for example. There are “AI” plugins that state they use AI but it’s ML or maybe just some cleverly written code. What happens to people who use these? I’m against copyright in general, most definitely in its current form. But it would be ridiculous to think stripping copyright from beginning artists would be a good thing (without a complete reworking or reimagining of that entire system)

Skyrmir , 10 months ago

How much human authorship is required will be the next goal post battle.

joe , 10 months ago

This is probably right. LLMs can be used as a replacement for people (well, almost), or it can be used as a tool for people. Where that line is will be crucial.

I also don’t think it’s the same kind of “”“AI”“” as the kind that would be used to recreate a person’s likeness. That’s almost certainly going to be covered under copyright. (I bring this up because the article mentions it).

And even if there somehow is no line and any script written even partially by an AI cannot be copyrighted (unlikely I think) then the resulting film is still eligible for copyright protections.