A new federal ruling states human authorship remains an “essential part of a valid copyright claim”

  • treefrog@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    If he had made an automated toaster, we wouldn’t let him copyright the toast that comes out of it.

    He owns the patent. He doesn’t get to copyright the toast too.

        • Whiskey Pickle@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          possibly under the current law. when it comes to, say, lab-grown meat, there are specific, patented processes for doing that which can produce a specific result that could possibly be copyrighted. I think it would be hard to argue in court that it’s a “creative work”, but maybe? it wouldn’t surprise me if some particularly unscrupulous company made an attempt to do so.

          we very badly need IP law reform.

  • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    For context

    The decision, issued by Judge Beryl Howell, stemmed from computer scientist Stephen Thaler’s efforts to copyright an image he said was created by an AI model, identified as Creativity Machine. Thaler claimed that as the owner of Creativity Machine, he was entitled to the copyright. The Copyright Office rejected that application on the grounds that human authorship is necessary to secure a copyright, prompting Thaler to sue.

    Howell ultimately upheld the Copyright Office’s decision, citing long-standing precedent about human authorship. “The act of human creation — and how to best encourage human individuals to engage in that creation, and thereby promote science and the useful arts — was thus central to American copyright from its very inception,” Howell wrote. “Non-human actors need no incentivization with the promise of exclusive rights under United States law, and copyright was therefore not designed to reach them.”

      • Whiskey Pickle@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Copyright, in theory, is great. It’s the current state of intellectual property law, especially in the United States, that’s the problem. 

        • stevedidwhat_infosec
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          1 year ago

          As per usual not the technology but the implementation as it always is, time in and time out

          • Whiskey Pickle@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            well, if you really want to get specific, it’s because large corporations with a vested interest in maintaining and consolidating IP rights for as long as possible while neglecting small artists and individuals were the ones in charge of writing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and then the US strong-armed most of the rest of the world into adopting most or all of it via compliance by means of a great many treaties, trade deals, etc. in the wake of 9/11 and the expanding militarization during the “War on Terror” at the time. it was pretty underhanded.

            Or, in other words: capitalism screwed the little people, and we’re still paying the price.

            • stevedidwhat_infosec
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              1 year ago

              You mean to tell me that the rich and famous still influence the laws of the land 🤔

  • PancakeLegend@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    It seems that AI without human guidance is mostly useless. So far we’ve seen that you need a human operator, and typically one with decent domain-specific knowledge/skill to get an AI to produce anything worthwhile. That guidance is essentially human authorship.

    • FlowVoid@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Most of the time, human guidance occurs before the AI generates anything. For example, ChatGPT was trained with human involvement, but most of what it writes will not be reviewed and edited by a human.

      However, an identifiable component of the text must have been written by a human author in order to claim copyright. So most of what ChatGPT writes cannot be copyrighted. It would only be eligible for copyright if a human reviewed and edited what ChatGPT had written.

      There is an underlying tension in that copyright is explicitly meant to be an incentive for creative efforts made by humans (who would otherwise be doing something else), and AI is generally designed to replace humans engaged in creative efforts.

  • Halosheep@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    What if I were to create a training model made exclusively from my own artwork. It would only be reassembling my work, so would that not be copyrighteable?

    I wonder how that would be handled in the future.

  • nutsack@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    ai and copyright are the two shittiest fucks in my ass im glad they’re together now making a complete shitwizard