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.”
The basic legal test has to do with control over the output. A prompt is not control. If you tell Stable Diffusion “draw a dog playing chess” then you do not control the creative choices made in the image. Thus, they are not protected.
That’s why Pollock paintings can be copyrighted: the key creative choices were controlled by Pollock. He wanted some blue streaks in one area and some red streaks in a different area.
To the extent that AI output can be controlled, it can be copyrighted. If you take a photo and tell an AI, “desaturate this photo” then there is only one possible outcome. The lack of color in the product was fully under your control. Likewise if you say, “Copy dog.gif from my Documents folder to the bottom left corner of the image”.
On the other hand if you say, “Add a dog to the image”, then not so much. Who determined what the dog would look like? Not you. So the dog is in the public domain.
And once in the public domain, it will likely remain there even if you iterate your prompts, like “Elongate the snout and widen the eyes”. For the same reason that you generally cannot copyright an image of the Mona Lisa even with minor alterations.
So if I tell the ai - create a canvas 12" x 12" and put 00FF13 colored paint via a 1" brush aligned 13 degrees in the upper left quadrant 2 inches down and to the right, then another in the bottom right quadrant 3" from the bottom and 2" from the right of 1200FF paint, is that not way more specific than buying paint at a store, doing some guestimation mixing of colors and splattering some on a canvas haphazardly?
Just trying to understand where the line of ML assisted art becomes non-artistic/non-copywritable. Is there a technical criteria? what about artists woh use Photoshop with ML derived filters for their final product? are those also not owned by the artist the moment that the ml tool is applied?
What if you create the model yourself with only your own training data? e.g. you are the only sole creator of the entire tool/model itself.
So many possibilities that create questions…
The cases where copyright was denied involved prompt-driven generative AI. At some point the artist admitted that some of the creative decisions were made by the AI.
In your first example, you made all the creative decisions. The same is true of many filters, for example if I apply a “50s cinema filter” then I know exactly what it will do. The AI doesn’t get to make any decisions.
On the other hand, if you tell the AI to “add some clouds to the image” and the algorithm decides where they go, then the sky it produces is not protected. Only the elements you controlled are.
You clearly don’t understand how (lots of sophisticated) AI art is made. At what point does the generative capabilities in Photoshop (which you can give prompts to) become not controlling the output? At which point does control net (which literally allows you to pose models and replace every single thing about a scene along with numerous other features) become “controlling the output”.
“All decisions have to be controlled by the artist” isn’t how art works either. See any sort of public art, or even the paintings you make by literally just pouring paint on a canvas or hanging a bucket of paint by a string and having it move across a canvas and drip.
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.
Your logic is just absolutely horrendous and outright wrong. Please stop spreading misinformation.
If you want to make sure AI art can’t be copyrighted there are other actual logical reasons that I’ve already covered. Arguing with you when you clearly don’t understand what you’re talking about is incredibly annoying though so I’m gonna wish you a good day.
On the contrary, I’m just repeating what courts have already ruled.
You’re the one spreading misinformation. For instance, you just suggested using AI to delete something would invalidate copyright over the rest of the image, which is simply nonsense.