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AI-Created Art Isn’t Copyrightable, Judge Says In Ruling That Could Give Hollywood Studios Pause
(www.hollywoodreporter.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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If you hire someone and tell them "paint my room orange", did you paint the room orange?
Wouldn't that logic give the camera people and editors the copyrights in film?
Funny that. In fact, they should totally have credit, but our copyright laws are so weighted for the property owners (rather than creators) that crediting has to be negotiated in a contract, and Hollywood lawyers are infamous for using loopholes and confusing language to remove credit and payment obligations.
To be fair copyright is fucked up, and you don't have to create something to own its rights. For example, most of the music you listen to isn't owned by the artists but the labels, and the artists only get paid if they're super popular, like Madonna or Metallica or Ye. (Which means if you pirate something as an alternative to paying for it you're denying profits to the labels, but not failing to support the artists. If you want to support an artist, go to a concert and buy one of their official t-shirts.)
So I don't think this ruling is going to slow things down. The bare minimum Hollywood studios have to do is pass AI art / copy / whatever through an editor who changes a small portion, and lo! I human made this! Then it'll go back to the courts, and they'll see it's ridiculous. (Mark Isham -- I think that's the guy -- has been tinkering with procedural music for eons, so there's counter precedent.)
Weirdly enough, it might.
I mean, sure, an orange room doesn't qualify for copyright.
But if you instruct helpers to help you make a copyrightable work to your specifications (e.g. architects instructing workers to build the building), then you own the copyright.
It all comes down to who had what part of the creative process.
For example, if I create a digital artwork and I use an AI tool to increase the resolution, I totally still own the artwork.
I am also pretty sure I retain the copyright if I let an AI fix my spelling in a story I wrote.
But if my input is negligable ("Write me a short story."), I definitely don't have the copyright.
Copyright law is complicated and there's never a clear general answer.
"For example, if I create a digital artwork and I use an AI tool to increase the resolution, I totally still own the artwork."
There are tools that allow you to convert a stick figure drawing plus a prompt into whatever you want. I can draw a stick figure holding a circle and prompt it as a bunny holding an apple and I could get the desired output. Of course thats more than increasing resolution but where do we draw the line.
we let the AI draw it for us
That's what I said, yeah.
The line is probably drawn where it is drawn when using any other tool: For your contribution to be copyright-worthy it needs to be above the required threshold of originality. Copyright doesn't distinguish between different tools you use, it just requires you to have put enough creativity into it for it to be a creative work.
AI in this respect is very close to photography.
Just pulling out your phone and snapping a picture of something does not clear the theshold, so you have no copyright over it, no matter how detailled the picture is.
If you set up the scene and put a lot of creative input into preparation and post-processing of the picture, you will clear that threshold and you will have copyright over it.
If this sounds arbitrary and hard to pinpoint whether that threshold (which is not clearly defined anywhere) is cleared, you are totally right. This is a big issue with the copyright system, but it's also nothing that will be fixed by some people commenting on the internet.
So the question is "Did the human input into the AI tool clear the thresold or not?"
This question is the same, regardless of what tools are used, and it's a common part of lawsuits concerning copyright. There is no blanket answer and it needs to be checked on a case-by-case basis. That's how copyright law works.