Opinion: The Copyright Office is making a mistake on AI-generated art
Opinion: The Copyright Office is making a mistake on AI-generated art
A rule against copyrighting AI art will be unworkable.
I've generally been against giving AI works copyright, but this article presented what I felt were compelling arguments for why I might be wrong. What do you think?
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The argument relies a lot on an analogy to photographers, which misunderstands the nature of photography. A photographer does not give their camera prompts and then evaluate the output.
A better analogy would be giving your camera to a passerby and asking them to take your photo, with prompts about what you want in the background, lighting, etc. No matter how detailed your instructions, you won't have a copyright on the photo.
This AI ruling is also actually completely in-line with existing precedent from the photography world.
The US Copyright Office has previously ruled that a photograph taken by a non-human (in this case, a monkey) is not copyrightable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute
If he had deliberately caused the monkey to take that photo, he might have owned the copyright.
If you pay a photographer to take photos at your wedding, you own the copyright for those photos - not the photographer.
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Generally, photographers do not like to offer their services to clients through a Work for Hire Agreement
If I was getting married, I'd find one that will do a work for hire agreement. It's my wedding, I want to own the photos. Nobody else should be profiting off them (aside from what I paid them to take the photos).
You probably actually wouldn't when it's 5 times more expensive.
If you deal with the photographer that you own the images from the wedding and that's in the contract, yeah. Otherwise, traditional copyright law would apply, and the photographer gets the rights.
Unless it is explicity specified in a contract, no you wouldn't. Most people don't.
A better analogy would be giving your camera to a passerby and asking them to take your photo, with prompts about what you want in the background, lighting, etc. No matter how detailed your instructions, you won’t have a copyright on the photo.
I like this analogy a lot.
"Prompts" are actually used a lot in creative circles, whether for art or writing. But no matter how specific you are when you write a prompt for, say, r/WritingPrompts (and some of them are incredibly specific due to posters literally having an idea and hoping someone else will write it for them), the resulting story will never be copyrighted to you.
What if you’re paying the writers on a work for hire basis?
The writing is still copyrighted to the writers, not to you, unless the contract states otherwise. Same as with the wedding photo example described in other comments.
In a work for hire contract, the contract explicitly states that the employer gets the copyright.
You can think of the compensation as being partly from employment, and partly from the sale of any copyright.
A photographer does not give their camera prompts and then evaluate the output.
I understand what you're trying to say, but I think this will grow increasingly unclear as machines/software continue to play a larger and larger part of the creative process.
I think you can argue that photographers issue commands to their camera and then evaluate the output. Modern digital cameras have made photography almost a statistical exercise rather than a careful creative process. Photographers take hundreds and hundreds of shots and then evaluate which one was best.
Also, AI isn't some binary on/off. Most major software will begin incorporating AI assistant tools that will further muddy the waters. Is something AI generated if the artist added an extra inch of canvas to a photograph using photoshops new generative fill function so that the subject was better centered in the frame?
I think the major difference that determines copywrightability is the amount of control the artist has on the outcome. If a photographer doesn't like the composition of a photo, there's a variety of things they can do to directly impact the photo (camera positioning/settings, moving the subjects, changing lighting, etc.), before it's even captured by the camera. If someone is generating a picture with AI and they don't like the composition of the image, there's nothing they can do directly impact what the output will be.
If you want a picture of an apple, where the apple is placed precisely at a certain spot in frame, a photographer can easily accomplish this, but someone using AI will have to generate the image over and over, hoping that the algorithm decides to eventually place the apple exactly in the desired spot
This isn't true with AI generators. You can absolutely draw in a shitty stick figure with the pose you want and it'll transform that into a proper artwork with the person in that pose. There are tons and tons of ways to manipulate the the output.
And again, we give copyright to artists that incorporate randomness into their art. If I throw darts at paint filled balloons I get to copyright the output. It would be absolutely impossible to replicate that piece and I only have vague control over the results.
before it’s even captured by the camera. If someone is generating a picture with AI and they don’t like the composition of the image, there’s nothing they can do directly impact what the output will be.
That is plain incorrect.
The copyright office has been pretty clear that if an artist is significantly involved in creating an image but then adjusts it with AI, or vice versa, then the work is still eligible for copyright.
In all of the cases where copyright was denied, the artist made no significant changes to AI output and/or provided the AI with nothing more than a prompt.
Photographers give commands to their camera just as a traditional artist gives commands in Photoshop. The results in both cases are completely predictable. This is where they diverge from AI-generated art.
Many cameras these days have AI autofocus for subject detection. Phone cameras use AI image enhancemnnt by default.
No matter how detailed your instructions, you won’t have a copyright on the photo.
If you reach a certain threshold you'd be co-creator. AIs can't hold copyright, so in the analogous case you'd be sole copyright holder.
Take the movie industry and try to argue, as a camera operator, that the director has no rights at all to the video you shoot. I'm waiting.
In the movie industry, everyone usually signs a work for hire contract that specifies who will have the rights to the completed film.
However, in a recent case the director (Alex Merkin) did not sign a contract and then tried to claim copyright afterwards. The court said that directors have no inherent copyright over film:
We answer that question in the negative on the facts of the present case, finding that the Copyright Actʹs terms, structure, and history support the conclusion that Merkinʹs contributions to the film do not themselves constitute a ʺwork of authorshipʺ amenable to copyright protection. ... As a general rule, the author is the party who actually creates the work, that is, the person who translates an idea into a fixed, tangible expression entitled to copyright protection. ... But a directorʹs contribution to an integrated ʺwork of authorshipʺ such as a film is not itself a ʺwork of authorshipʺ subject to its own copyright protection.
As a general rule, the author is the party who actually creates the work, that is, the person who translates an idea into a fixed, tangible expression entitled to copyright protection
Yes that's a thing directors do. They do the translation between script and image, anything cinematography in a movie is due to them.
Taking the judges' reasoning to an extreme you'd expect them to rule that if I dictate a book to someone who then writes it down I do not own copyright because I did not give the work its tangible expression.
Whose lawyers was he up against? Disney?
There’s gaussian noise involved in many of photoshop’s brushes I’m pretty sure.
Does that make photoshop not a pure function of the user’s input, and hence incapable of producing anything copyrightable?
You need direct control over some elements of a work to claim copyright. Not necessarily all of them.
So even if the microtexture is out of your control, you still have complete control of the framing, color, etc. That's sufficient to claim copyright.
If you lose control of every element by replacing them all with prompts and/or chance, then you lose the copyright. Which is what happened in the "monkey selfie" photo.