The Copyright Office has a clear policy on AI.

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.”

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 month ago

    This is stupid and I hope he gets his butt handed to him, but:

    A federal judge agreed with the Office and contrasted AI images to photography, which also uses a processor to capture images, but it is the human that decides on the elements of the picture, unlike AI imagery where the computer decides on the picture elements.

    Journey outside the world of API models (like Midjourney) and you can use imagegen tools where " the human that decides on the elements of the picture"

    It can be anything from area prompting (kinda drawing bounding boxes where you want things to go) to controlnet/ipadapter models using some other image as reference, to the “creator” making a sketch and the AI “coloring it in” or fleshing it out, to an artist making a worthy standalone painting and letting the AI “touch it up” or change the style (for instance, to turn a digital painting or a pencil sketch to something resembling a physical painting, watercolor, whatever).

    The later is already done in photoshop (just not as well) and is generally not placed into the AI bin.

    In other words, this argument isn’t going to hold up, as the line is very blurry. Legislators and courts are going to have to come up with something more solid.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
      3·
      1 month ago

      The rule is already human expression in fixed form, of creative height. So you have to demonstrate that you the human made notable contributions to the final output.

      • Chozo@fedia.io
        2·
        1 month ago

        I’m sure that an argument can be made that the final output can’t be generated without the human-created prompt. Generative AI doesn’t output images on its own without a seed/prompt, much like a canvas doesn’t paint itself and a camera doesn’t open the shutter on its own.