When you create AI art, the AI essentially gathers info on images related in your prompt, and sot of mashes it into one piece.
Now, when that image is made, who owns it? Is it you? The AI? Maybe even the company that created the AI? No one?
Ownership
In the United States, you get the copyright for all of your creative works. From there you can choose what other people do with it. Do you want people to use a song you made in their own works? Up to you!
You may also choose to go through a registration process to make that copyright official. This allows you to sue other people who use your work in an unfair way.
Can The AI Own Copyright?
In 2011, Wikimedia Commons uploaded pictures of a monkey:
The source of the image came from photographer David Slater. He designed a system that would allow the monkey to take its own selfie. Slater wanted the images removed, and even took Wikimedia to court.
Unfortunately, there’s one rule that prevents him from owning copyright of the image: Only people can own copyright.
Since the picture was taken by the monkey, it immediately went to the public domain since the monkey can’t own it. It’s why I’m able to use this image right now!
Here’s what Slater has to say:
Using this knowlege, we know that the AI is not a person, and therefore the copyright automatically goes to the public domain.
Another Problem
There’s another problem though: When generative AI’s like Stable Diffusion were trained using a database of images, it was found that some images in the database were copyrighted.
Getty Images is a company that lets you use their huge stock photo library in exchange for money. It turns out, the Stability AI used for Stable Diffusion used 12 million of these images without paying.
Getty Images has sued Stability AI, and is looking for $150 thousand per stolen image. That could lead to a ridiculous $1.8 trillion lawsuit.
The Real World
Zarya of The Dawn, written by Kris Kashtanova, is a comic book consisting AI-generated images. The author created the storyline, but all images were created by the generative AI, Midjourney.
Kashtanova registered for copyright of the comic, which was then granted by the US Copyright Office. The catch? They didn’t know that the images were created by Midjourney. When this was discovered, the copyright was actually revoked, because it was deemed to not have enough creative effort.
Note that only the copyright of the images have been revoked. Everything else, including the storyline, are still under copyright.
Conclusion
AI is becoming more and more powerful, to the point where people can’t tell the difference between human and AI-generated art.
It’s important that we understand who owns what with generative AI’s taking the world by storm. And, there could be a chance copyright laws could change in the future.
RELATED STORES:
https://itsartlaw.org/2022/11/21/artistic-or-artificial-ai/
https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-has-an-intellectual-property-problem
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