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.”
I actually covered this exact point:
When two sentient life forms collaborate to create art, then they share the ownership. When an employer tells me what photographs to take, they have a part in the creative process and have placed their intent into the work. Now, 99% of the time, when an employer asks for something, and I do the work, they don’t take the credit for it. They defer to me and understand that my knowledge has given their idea form, and because of my intent, their intent has been realised. However, there can be arguments made for shared ownership if they have given me input as to what they want. I’ll even praise someone who has done some research beforehand and said something like, “When I was here last week, at 4pm, the sun shone through here beautifully, and we’d like to get some photos with that.” That is a shared creative experience, and the intent of both parties creates the art, and so both parties have some ownership. You can also look at this through the lens of the music industry, where a performer may not write their own songs, and both the artist and the songwriter share credit for the song (though usually not equally).
Now, when I give instructions to an AI on what art I would like to see, that AI has no input in the process, it simply pulls from its dataset and applies a randomly generated seed to create the image. It exerts no will of its own, and so no intent of its own is wielded over the art, as it has neither. It is no more willful than the grain of the pencil lead.
I think your approach would not work in practice. The test is not how it plays out when people are cooperating, but what happens when there is a dispute. And if the principle is “providing some input gives ownership” then the photographer, photographer’s assistant, agent, employer, and employer’s ex-wife will all sue each other over ownership.
In the music industry, you need to actually perform a piece to claim performance credit or specify the verses of a song that you personally wrote to claim writing credit.
I mean, that’s any artistic industry, really. Movies aren’t solely made by the director, music isn’t solely made by the singer. Sometimes those people can be the sole creator of the art, but when they aren’t, credit is shared.
Agreed, in which case you would get performance credit and everyone else will get credit for what their contributed. No one gives credit to the microphone cord, though. No one is crediting the studio lights. They aren’t sentient. Their intent isn’t exerted over the art.
Movies aren’t made solely by the director, but certain requirements must be met before one can claim copyright. Hundreds of people can offer their input but not be eligible for copyright, because offering input is not sufficient. There must be some direct control over an element of the output, whether that’s the cinematography, writing, or soundtrack.
It’s true that inanimate objects can’t claim copyright but that does not remove the requirement for direct control. If no human has direct control then the rights revert to public domain, for example no human has direct control of a sunset so a sunset cannot be copyrighted.
Right, and hundreds of people may have programmed the LLM, but they don’t get credit for the art.
A human does have direct control, though. I control the keywords. I control the random seed if I don’t want it to be random. In the case of MidJourney, I can prompt with an image to control the character, style, and over-all image composition. I have a lot of control over what comes out. Just because I don’t control exactly where each pixel goes doesn’t mean my intent isn’t exerted over the final piece, just like I can’t control every bristle on a paintbrush.
You directly control every pixel on your paintbrush, whether you want to or not. Who else controls it? It can only move when your mouse moves, which can only move when you cause your hand to move.
In contrast, you have some control over MidJourney output, but not direct control. Something could appear in the output that you did not cause.
I meant a physical paintbrush, not a digital one. A physical one is effected by many outside forces I have no control over. As far as a digital brush, you are correct, I can control exactly where it goes. If we are going to argue the merits of digital and analogue art and whether one has more value than the other, I think I’ll bow out, because even I’m not brave enough to find a soapbox to stand on in that one.
But that would be controlled by something, likely something that has been programmed into it. In dealing with computers, the concept of “random” isn’t real. Everything is deterministic. Whether I am the one that forced the output, or it was something that was programmed, it is not the intent of the program, because the program has no intent.
To the extent that you do not control a physical paintbrush, you lose your claim to copyright.
If you left a wet brush on a piece of paper and came back the next day to find the wind had blown it across the paper leaving a paint streak, that paint streak could not be copyrighted. You fully relinquished control of the brush to the wind.
Arguably the same is true of the wind. So to claim copyright, you cannot relinquish control to an inanimate object. Not to the wind, not to an AI.
I wouldn’t claim to have created that. I didn’t exert my intent. However, if my intent were to show the art of the natural world by allowing the wind to paint on a canvas, that would qualify as art, and could be copyrighted.
You can, if it is your intent. I just finished arguing this point on another part of this thread, but Jackson Pollock and Damien Hirst are two examples of this. They both relinquish their tools to “randomness” and have had their works copyrighted. Control doesn’t matter. Intent matters.