Item — HN Reader

There haven't been any solid rulings on the copyright validity of human-driven AI generation yet. There have been a few cases, but they've been muddied by complicating factors (not a human doing the generation - that is, autonomous generation - or the generation being used as a base work for something else).

Additionally, even if there's no copyright, the terms of service may still apply separately (see OpenAI disallowing training a competitor model on output from OpenAI models)

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I don’t think we’re going to see a ruling against copyright in the long term. When the rulings do come, they’re going to be complex (not that copyright law isn’t already complex). As prompting and working with AIs slowly becomes its own art and skill, it will become clear that works need protection. We’ve had “intelligent” filters and tools in Photoshop for decades, this is just the next step in that evolution.

The only real problem here is that the original creators of the art that these AIs were trained on didn’t consent to this type of use and aren’t getting any kind of attribution or payment. If they were recognized and compensated, there’d be really nothing to talk about here - any work could be copyrighted, with whatever derivative status the AI bakes in.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37195509

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/19/23838458/ai-generated-art...

I believe that as the article says despite the headline this case was specifically about a situation where a computer scientist wanted to list the AI as the one creating the work. The case doesn't examine an argument that things can be copyrighted when a human is involved either by filtering the output or even just by developing the algorithm involved and thus the human is the artist and the AI is just a tool. I think what's clear is that legally AI can't itself create a copy righted work just like a camera can't be listed as the author of a work, but it's not clear if a human using AI as a tool either through prompting or filtering counts as a creative act under copyright or if AI generated creations count as derivative works of the models weights.

A copyright is a government granted monopoly. The copyright office has stated they wont grant monopoly privilege for ai generated art. The courts thus far have backed them up.

I would say it doesnt look good at the moment for to try and enforce ownership of something ai generated, it would be an uphill battle, and the default/null position would be that the art is free to use, and unprotected by government.

> The copyright office has stated they wont grant monopoly privilege for ai generated art.

No, they haven't.

They've said that if the only human input is a text prompt, then it lacks the required human creativity to be eligible for copyright protection.

Not trying to be combative, but I don't see the difference?

Real AI imagegen workflows very often have more input from the human creating the image than a text prompt.

seems a little circular semantically. if it has significant human input its human generated moreso than ai generated, in which case we are saying the same thing.

Textures, sample images, something like that?

ControlNet offers a wide variety of additional input sources: https://stable-diffusion-art.com/controlnet/#Preprocessors_a...

> Additionally, even if there's no copyright, the terms of service may still apply separately (see OpenAI disallowing training a competitor model on output from OpenAI models)

Aren't contract clauses that relate to the distribution of material preempted by the copyright act?

No. However contract clauses only apply to people who are actually parties to the contract.

For example you and I could enter into a contract for me to use AI to generate something that is not copyrightable from data you provide and give you a copy of that thing. There would in general be no legal problem if the contract included restrictions on what you could do with that thing, including restrictions on distributing it.

Part of the quid pro quo of a contract can be one party giving up a right to do something that they would normally have a right to do.

Now suppose the contract did allow you to make and distribute copies as part of your product. Someone else starts making copies of those copies you distributed and distributing those copies.

There is no contract between me and that person, so I would not be able to stop them. I've got no contract with them, and the thing is not copyrighted, so there's nothing that prevents them from copying it.

> Aren't contract clauses that relate to the distribution of material preempted by the copyright act?

Generally, no. It's possible for there to be interactions in some cases, but the Copyright Act wouldn't generally preempt contract terms. (Its closer to the other way around, in that—to the extent copyright rights exist that could otherwise be enforced—a relevant contract will generally limit enforcement and recover to breach of contract rather than bare copyright action.)