this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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An artist who infamously duped an art contest with an AI image is suing the U.S. Copyright Office over its refusal to register the image’s copyright. 

In the lawsuit, Jason M. Allen asks a Colorado federal court to reverse the Copyright Office’s decision on his artwork Theatre D’opera Spatialbecause it was an expression of his creativity.

Reuters says the Copyright Office refused to comment on the case while Allen in a statement complains that the office’s decision “put me in a terrible position, with no recourse against others who are blatantly and repeatedly stealing my work.”

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 135 points 1 month ago (14 children)

You have to be the creator of the work in order to copyright it. He didn't create the work. If the wind organized the leaves into a beautiful pattern, he couldn't copyright the leaves either.

[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 72 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Weirdly enough the monkey selfie probably establishes some precedence here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute

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[–] paddirn@lemmy.world 37 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You could copyright a photograph of that leaf pattern though, couldn’t you?

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 43 points 1 month ago (1 children)

but its just a photocopy of the leaves, not the actual leaves. And to photograph something, you capture it according to your will. What will be the light situation, from which angle, at what focal length,... so many options.

[–] Mechanize@feddit.it 29 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This is getting weird.

If I would generate an image with an AI and then take a photo of it, I could copyright the photo, even if the underlying art is not copyrightable, just like the leaves?

So, in an hypothetical way, I could hold a copyright on the photo of the image, but not on the image itself.

So if someone would find the model, seed, inference engine and prompt they could theoretically redo the image and use it, but until then they would be unable to use my photo for it?

So I would have a copyright to it through obscurity, trying to make it unfeasible to replicate?

This does sound bananas, which - to be fair - is pretty in line with my general impression of copyright laws.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 30 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Copyright covers your creative expression.

For example, you draw a superhero named "LemmyMan" and post it online. All of your creative choices are protected. If someone made another LemmyMan with a different caption, they would be violating your copyright because you created everything about LemmyMan, not just the caption in your drawing.

Now suppose you take a photo of Mount Everest. Mount Everest is not your creation, but the choices of lighting, foreground, and perspective are. Someone could not copy your exact photo, but they could take a different photo of Mount Everest making different creative choices.

The same is true of taking a photo of work in the public domain, like the Mona Lisa. If you make no creative addition to the Mona Lisa in your photo, then you have no copyright at all. If you put some creativity into your photo, like some interesting lighting, then those creative elements are protected. But anyone else could still take a photo of the Mona Lisa with different lighting, the subject itself is not under copyright.

Now suppose you tell an AI, "Draw me a superhero", and it outputs ChatMan. If you make no further creative additions, then you have no copyright at all. But suppose you add a caption to it. Then the caption is your creative expression, so that is protected. But the rest of ChatMan is not, it's in the public domain just like the Mona Lisa. Anyone else can make their own version of ChatMan that's exactly the same minus your caption, because the underlying subject is not protected.

[–] Dkarma@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You just inadvertently explained why copyright doesn't cover training. Thanks.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Copyright doesn't cover the output of training. But AI companies are being sued over training input.

If you want to download a bunch of images from the Getty catalog, you need permission from Getty. If you don't have their permission and download them anyway, you can be sued. It doesn't even matter whether those images are used for training or some other commercial purpose unrelated to AI.

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[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 16 points 1 month ago (21 children)

It's human expression that is protected by copyright. Creative height is the bar.

If you've done nothing but press a button there's often no copyright. Photography involves things like selection of motive, framing, etc. If you just photograph a motive which itself doesn't have copyright, then what you added through your choices is what you may have copyright of. Using another's scan of a public domain book might be considered fair use, for example (not much extra expression added by just scanning)

Independent creation is indeed a thing in copyright law. Multiple people photographing the same sunset won't infringe each other's copyright, at least not if you don't intentionally try to copy another's expression, like actively replicating their framing and edits and more.

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[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago (4 children)

You can copyright a combination of words, though, and it was his unique combination that created the art. The artist doesn't copyright the palette, and the shop that sold the pigments holds no ownership over the painting. If the art is created with paint, pixels, or phrase, the final product belongs to the artist, and so should be protected by law for them.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If I use a combination of words to commission an artist to paint a picture, I don't own the copyright on that picture.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 13 points 1 month ago (12 children)

If it's a commission, you might. Depends on the how the contract is worded.

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[–] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (34 children)

It has to be fixed in a tangible medium.

In this case they’re not “fixing” their words and the final art is the created expression. Yet in this case their created expression wasn’t created by them but the program.

In this case their combination is the palette and paint but the program “interpreted” and so fixed it.

For example you can’t copyright a simple and common saying. Nor something factual like a phone book. Likewise you can’t copyright recipes. There has to be a “creative” component by a human. And courts have ruled that AI generated content doesn’t meet that threshold.

That’s not to say that creating the right prompt isn’t an “art” (as in skill and technique) and there is a lot of work in getting them to work right. Likewise there’s a lot of work in compiling recipes, organizing them, etc. but even then only the “design” part of the arrangement of the facts, and excluding the factual content, can be copyrighted.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 month ago

Using stuff like controlnet to manually influence how images are shaped by the ML engine might count, there's some great examples here (involving custom Qr codes)

https://medium.com/@ssmaameri/ai-generated-qr-codes-with-controlnet-huggingface-and-google-colab-a99ffeee2210

[–] tyler@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago

In general these art pieces are not created simply with words. Users control the output using ControlNet which allows drawing on the image to force regeneration only to specific areas. It seems that if your only logic around it being non-copyrightable is due to them using words and that the program “does it all”, but that’s just not how it works.

I’m not in favor of copyrights for stuff like this, but you have a terrible misunderstanding of how these art pieces are created and it’s affecting your argument negatively.

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[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (14 children)

You can copyright a combination of words, though, and it was his unique combination that created the art

so its literature, then?

The artist doesn’t copyright the palette, and the shop that sold the pigments holds no ownership over the painting.

Sure, the artist doesn't copyright a palette, or the shop does not hold ownership of pigments. But Companies do patent pigments.

If the art is created with paint, pixels, or phrase, the final product belongs to the artist, and so should be protected by law for them.

If you commission an Art piece, with a detailed description of what it should display. The artist comes back to you with a draft, you tell them to adjust here and there, and you finally after several rounds of drafting got the commissioned art piece. Did you draw it?

Thats what LLMs do and nothing else.

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[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (4 children)

the final product belongs to the artist, and so should be protected by law for them.

Then the real artist, the AI, should request the copyright. And sue the charlatan that tried to take its work and claim all credit.

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[–] jaybone@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Couldn’t you take a picture of the leaves and copyright that?

[–] photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, you could. BTW I just took a screenshot of your comment so it's mine to copyright.

[–] Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean, literally yes, though?

Like, it's not meaningful at all, but yes, it's copyrightable.

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