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People are ‘blatantly stealing my work,’ AI artist complains - with notes on a similar appeal that failed hard just recently (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

"All Allen could copyright was what he did to the image himself" - so if he trained the model himself, would that make the work copyrightable? Does that mean midjourney has the copyright of all the images created with it?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The image gatcha does not create a new copyright. There might be a copyright in the text of a complex prompt (do you feel lucky in court?) Mere "sweat of the brow" does not generate a new copyright in the US, so e.g. retouching work on a photo does not generate a new copyright and photos of a public domain artwork do not create a new copyright.

This doesn't touch on the old copyrights of the stuff Midjourney trained on to make its computer-mediated collages. Those copyrights still exist.

Does the computer-mediated collage launder the previous copyrights? The answer is "do you feel lucky in court?"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's Tornado Cash, but for pictures of Garfield with a machete.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

North Korea: "AUGH MY EYES"

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

so if he trained the model himself, would that make the work copyrightable?

I think if he "trained" the model on art he himself created you might have an argument.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Not in the US, there art can only be created by a human.
If it's created by an algorithm or animal supernatural being it's public domain.

Interesting facts:

when photography was invented there was a debate whether photos can be copyrighted
if you claim to have written down something revealed to you by a supernatural entity, it's public domain
the following image is public domain because it was taken by a monkey

[–] Grimy 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

So midjourney give it's users ownership, as do all the other image generation services.

That being said, what you quoted means that if someone generates an image and then further modifies it, then they can copyright it. If all they did was prompt the model and nothing else, then it isn't possible to copyright.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Ah thanks for the clarification.

Cant stop thinking about the http://allthemusic.info/ project. Would be a crazy amount of data but making every possible image and make it public domain. Unoriginal therefore uncopyrightable.

[–] Dkarma 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's not mid journeys call.

AI generated art cannot be copyrighted. End of story.

[–] Grimy 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yes, purely AI generated outputs cannot currently be copyrighted. It's to be seen what ration of ai vs human is needed for copyrights to take affect.

This is very new tech and the courts are already way behind. A lot of things can change quickly with just a case or two. We aren't near the end of the story.