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.”
At the point where a creative decision is made that the user did not control, that element is not eligible for copyright.
So to return to my example: suppose a photographer takes a photo of a model and asks an AI to add a dog to the image. Unless the dog comes from one of their other photos, they can’t copyright it (although they can still copyright the model).
Now suppose another photographer takes a photo of Mt Everest. They ask the same AI to add a dog to the image, which results in the same (or very similar) dog. The first photographer can’t sue the second one for copyright infringement, because the first one didn’t create that dog and therefore has no rights over it.
That’s like asking “How many alterations do I have to make to an image of the Mona Lisa to transform it into something I can copyright it as my own work?”
The answer is: it’s up to the judge. See: Lynn Goldsmith vs Andy Warhol
An artist pouring paint on canvas or hanging a bucket of paint on a string can still plausibly tell a judge that they controlled the output. The behavior of such mechanical devices is fully predictable by the user. Or they might claim that they controlled some elements of the output but not others. Then they can copyright the elements they controlled.
Of course if they want to lose their copyright, then they are free to tell everyone that they didn’t really have any control over the output. See: Monkey selfie.
You can copyright a tangible thing that you personally created but you can’t claim a copyright over the interaction of the public with what you created.
To the extent that members of the public contribute tangible creative elements to the work (for example inviting the public to decorate your work), those contributors will share the copyright with you over the final result.
Your logic means that every single photo touched by the “content aware delete” in Photoshop is ineligible for copyright which is hilariously incorrect. Your logic would not hold up in court (and hasn’t!).
No. No it’s not. The fact you still can’t understand the difference between controlling an image with tools and asking an AI to do everything for you is pretty dang clear. Your logic resides entirely on the user doing everything which is not how art works. Many, many, many, MANY pieces of art do not involve the artist doing anything except setting up the initial conditions and seeing what happens. Since your beliefs hinge so heavily on the fact that you think the artist has to control all aspects of the creation you are refusing to even notice that copyright has held up for these cases, cases not involving AI at all, cases hundreds of years old.
And here we see you misunderstanding why the monkey selfie wasn’t copyrightable. It was not because the artist didn’t control the output. It was because non-humans cannot hold copyright. This is the true reason that AI art shouldn’t be copyrightable. But even legal experts agree that if he had taken it to court that he would have gotten copyright on the monkey selfie. https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/monkey-selfie-copyright-lessons-originality-photographs-and-internet-jurisdiction
Your logic around this is not only flawed, it’s just absolutely incorrect and has been shown to be incorrect in court. Control of the artist is not the only arbiter of copyright and you seem to not even have a basic grasp of how basic features like content aware delete in Photoshop even work. I can guess pretty solidly that you have never touched Photoshop nor bothered with something like control net in order to understand the implications of their use as a tool in art are.
I didn’t say anything about “content aware delete”
You still haven’t grasped that copyright can be applied to some elements of a photo, but not others.
I’ve said many times that copyright protects the creative decisions in a work, which you can’t seem to distinguish from “doing everything”.
Now explain why Andy Warhol could not claim copyright over “Orange Prince”. It has nothing to do with nonhumans or AI.
I’ll give you a hint: it has to do with creative decisions. Or lack thereof.