“A federal judge on Friday upheld a finding from the U.S. Copyright Office that a piece of art created by AI is not open to protection.” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote that for something to be copyrightable, “Human involvement in, and ultimate creative control over, the work at issue was key to the conclusion that the new type of work fell within the bounds of copyright.” So what does this mean? Not much, really. Is a human “prompt” enough to create “human involvement”? TBD. But still, this is a (small) step towards legally defining how AI and copyright work together.
That said, there is other case law that speaks to this issue. THR has a nice article on these other spheres. This article notes, in relation to the prompt question that — In the Copyright Office’s perspective, “Based on the Office’s understanding of the generative AI technologies currently available, users do not exercise ultimate creative control over how such systems interpret prompts and generate material,” reads the guidance. “Instead, these prompts function more like instructions to a commissioned artist — they identify what the prompter wishes to have depicted, but the machine determines how those instructions are implemented in its output.”
A really interesting aspect of all this is that it seems that copyright is only allowed for the human created parts … “In these cases, only the human-authored aspects of the work will be granted a copyright.” Fascinating, right? If you create with AI, then anyone can sell it. Or at least the part that is AI-generated. Like, you know, that entire novel that one guy “wrote”. We look forward to seeing how this all pans out.
PS Featured Generative AI image “Not Copyright Protected” brought to you by “what is in all their hands?”, “creepy faces”, “Is this a cult?” and “sitting on paintings”. Good to see complete mayhem from a prompt in full effect.
