- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Controversial AI art piece from 2022 lacks human authorship required for registration.
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Good. Maybe this could put a stop to the attempts by companies to gut their payroll and replace artists with software.
Using automation tools isn’t something new in engineering. One can claim that as long as a person is involved and guiding/manipulating the tool, it can be copyrighted. I am sure laws will catch up as usage of AI becomes mainstream in the industry.
I dont think AI is equivalent. It can create content without you being involved and in massive quantities. It is very much capable of decimating the workforce.
You have to remember that you exist in a capitalist system that would love very much to replace you with cheaper labor if it could and there is no human that can possibly work for cheaper than an appropriately trained AI.
The only way that an artist would have a chance to survive is either through maintaining the craft via the novelty of it. I.e hand drawn/painted etc. (Which would be progresssively easier to fake) Or to become one of the people that make prompts and dont actually generate the content themselves. And the latter group of people is going to shrink over time as AI gets better at making content with little input. So any precedent set now is going to cause issues down the line when the tide shifts in AI’s favor.
I agree that AI can decimate workforce. My point is, other tools did that already and this is not unique to AI. Imagine electronic chip design. Transistor was invented in 40s and it was a giant tube. Today we have chips with billions of transistors. Initially people were designing circuits on transistor level, then register transfer level languages got invented and added a layer of abstraction. Today we even have high level synthesis languages which converts C to a gatelist. And consider the backend, this gate list is routed into physical transistors in a way that timing is met, clocks are distributed in balance, signal and power integrity are preserved, heat is removed etc. Considering there are billions of transistors and no single unique way of connecting them, tool gets creative and comes with a solution among virtually infinite possibilities which satisfy your specification. You have to tell the tool what you need, and give some guidance occasionally, but what it does is incredible, creative, and wouldn’t be possible if you gathered all engineers in the world and make them focus on a single complex chip without tools’ help. So they have been taking engineers’ jobs for decades, but what happened so far is that industry grew together with automation. If we reach the limits of demand, or physical limitations of technology, or people cannot adapt to the development of the tools fast enough by updating their job description and skillset, then decimation of the workforce happens. But this isn’t unique to AI.
I am not against regulating AI, I am just saying what I think will happen. Offloading all work to AI and getting UBI would be nice, but I don’t see that happening in near future.
I don’t see the problem with getting replaced by AI or computers.
The goal should be that nobody has to work anymore. And we are free to follow our passions, instead of grinding our way through life in order to survive.
I know the idea doesn’t go hand in hand with Capitalism, but most things don’t so that isn’t unusual.
Thing is… if you are an artist that creates art because creating new things is the fun part to you, what do you do when AI can do everything you can but better and faster with no real input from you? This isnt even about making a living at that point but that the thing you chose to put all that work into, is now effectively something you dont meaningfully contribute to.
And lets be honest, this is capitalism were talking about. Do you really think the rich fucks that benefit from this are going to willingly share that extra productivity with the workers they displace? Or that the government is going to effectively handle the economic transition? Because productivity has been skyrocketing for years but wages havent.
People have this idea that AI could free us from needing to work but forget all the advances that increased productivity over and over that never lifted the burden. Back decades ago if you told someone that we were as productive as we are today, theyd expect that we worked 20 hours a week and lived luxuriously but in reality most people work at least 40 and barely scrape by. The situation is worse for anyone whose craft was made irrelevant by new technology. Good news! Your job isnt necessary. Bad news! Capitalism still expects you to “pull your weight” like it always has.
Every time something disruptive like this came about it effectively relegated whatever that was replaced to a small niche but in the case of AI, there is really nothing that you can do that it in principle cant. There isnt really a niche you will fit into at some point whether its your job or a hobby. If you are like me and enjoy creating things that have never been created before, youre done. AI can eventually create a million new things by the time you create one… that it already effectively made hundreds of thousands of iterations ago.
For AI to do what people are hoping it does, things have to play out differently this time than they have ever played out in history. The productivity gains have to match income. Inflation has to either be at or below the rate that income increases. And you have to find out how to tackle the fact that AI wont replace everyone all at once, it’ll do so sequentially. So the guy that used to be able to make a living drawing stuff, whose hobby and job overlapped, is now going to have to take out garbage instead because AI hasnt made robots cheap enough to replace them yet. Yet being the key word, eventually the only people that would have work are people that either manipulate or maintain the AI doing all of the work that remains and even that gets replaced at some point. All the while the value of peoples’ labor drops like a stone because AI can do whatever you can do with nothing more than electricity and occasional maintanence. No need for sleep, no need to eat or medical care, no family to support, no desire to travel or have recreation, the perfect worker.
The issue ultimately is that AI requires that we smoothly transition from a mostly capitalist system to a mostly socialist system without the zone of pain between them. And thats just the economic side of it.
That’s already the case, but also it has to be substantially guided by a human because copyright only protects human expression and elements beyond what the human intentionally expressed are not protected. (Of course studios won’t generally admit how much human involvement there really were)
Ha.
A lot of money will fly and laws and views will change like butter in the sun.
Just for once Id like to be optimistic
Pretty sure this case is dead. The copyright office did the same thing with the monkey selfies and the ai art piece from stephen thaler. That “void of ownership” is just public domain. Gonna be interesting what other kind of ai cases come up later though.
If you compare the AI image that was used with the image that one the price after the artist enhanced it to that level you could argue that paintings from sketches are not copyright-able
Well if the sketch was made by the artist then no you can’t, and if the sketch wasn’t then the copyright board has a right to know, and he didn’t disclose the original image.
Idk if he has shown the ai image (which isn’t copyright-able) but it was discloed that AI was used in the process
We’re gonna have some juicy legal battles when Hollywood start leveraging generative AI more and more
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Because Mr. Allen is unwilling to disclaim the AI-generated material, the Work cannot be registered as submitted," the office wrote in its decision.
In this case, “disclaim” refers to the act of formally renouncing or giving up any claim to the ownership or authorship of the AI-generated content in the work.
In August 2022, Artist Jason M. Allen created the piece in question, titled Theatre D’opera Spatial, using the Midjourney image synthesis service, which was relatively new at the time.
The image depicting a futuristic royal scene won top prize in the fair’s “Digital Arts/Digitally Manipulated Photography” category.
In his appeal, Allen claimed that “the Office is placing a value judgment on the utility of various tools” and that denying copyright protection for AI-generated artwork would result in a “void of ownership.”
More recently, it also denied copyright registration for an image that computer scientist Stephen Thaler claimed was autonomously generated by his AI system.
The original article contains 536 words, the summary contains 155 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Why do photographers get copyright over their pictures then?
They’re just pointing a camera at something and pressing a button.AI is a tool like any other.
Because photographs don’t require other people photographs to work. It just requires the labour of the engineers at Nikon and you payed them by buying the camera.
Use an AI algorithm with no training set and see how good your tool is.
What if I used an open source algo with my own photographs as a dataset 🤔
Then absolutely go ahead. That isn’t what the guy in the post did tough.
I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to keep copyright then. Everything involved would have been owned by you.
That is a big difference to how other generative models work though, which do use other people’s work.
Because you would have to prove that the AI only learned from your work and it’s my understanding that there is no way to track what is used as learning material or even have an AI unlearn something.
The people that is stealing art designed their algorithm to not contain proof that they stole art. If they are legally required to prove what training data they used in order to get a copyright then they will design the AI around that. That would immediately disqualify most of the current AIs because they have all been fed stolen art but I am sure they have the tech and capital to start over. And you know, Fuck em.
Did you know that it is illegal to take a photograph of the Eiffel tower at night? France lacks the right of panorama, and the lighting system was designed by someone still living. So photographs do require violating copyright law sometimes.
no no. You are not REQUIRED to break other peoples copyright in order to produce something with a camera. It is something you CAN do if you want to. AI literally cant function without a library of other peoples photos.
Someone else brought this up in this thread and it is the only circumstance should be able to copyright an AI artwork. If you own the copyright to every single piece of art in the training data. If I take 10.000 photos that are mine and feed them into an AI that produces more photos that are entirely based on my work then it should be copyrightable.
Everything in this world is owned by someone, either privately or by the government. (Well, astrophotography is an exception, but I did say ‘in this world’) You CANNOT take a photo without pointing it at something that is owned by someone. Is photography theft then?
Owning something and owning the copyright to something isn’t the same. You cant just make insane claims about something and expect me to engage with it. You are fully capable of taking photos that you own with the current copyright framework or photographers wouldnt be a profession and nothing would have pictures of anything.
And, as you said, you are fully capable of taking images that you own with the current copyright framework and creating legal AI images. If you don’t see the parallel between the two concepts and instead revert to insults and name calling, well, then I think I’ll just invoke “don’t feed trolls” and move on.
What insults and name calling? Shit, If I had known that you were this fragile I wouldn’t have bothered to respond properly and just called you removed.
Let’s break down some of the confusion you’re experiencing.
- When it comes to buildings there is indeed copyright on the building itself. The question is did you get a usage license from the owner to photograph the building for your purposes? For example if I were to get a written usage license for the lighting of the Eiffel Tower at night, and a location permit from the city I would be able to photograph it. This is common in commercial photography with contracts known as property releases.
- Theft in regards to photography usually means taking photographs of classified or trade secrets. General photographing of buildings in public spaces would not qualify as theft but copyright violation as per the previous example.
If you want to learn more you can google “photography usage rights” or “photography license agreement” and deep dive the untold number of blog posts about it. You can check out this blog post for a crash course if you need good starting point.
If books are more your fancy there’s Nancy Wolff’s The Professional Photographer’s Legal Handbook and the American Society of Media Photographer’s Professional Business Practices in Photography; both are pretty old but a very easy to understand. John Harrington’s Best Business Practices for Photographers also goes into detail and is more recent, but very broad in what it covers. Technically, there’s the demo for fotobiz X which will let you make a sample contract from their templates.
I’m sure you’ll find more resources but these books were my go-tos when I was working as a photographer. If you feel like socializing you check out your local APA (American Photographic Artists) or ASMP (American Society of Photographic Artists) chapters. Not sure if membership is still a requirement for attending events but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Because the human element is in everything they had to do to set up the photograph, from physically going to the location, to setting up the camera properly, to ensuring the right lighting, etc.
In an AI generated image, the only human element is in putting in a prompt(s) and selecting which picture you want. The AI made the art, not you, so only the enhancements on it are copywritable because those are the human element you added.
This scenario is closer to me asking why can’t I claim copyright over the objects in my photograph, be
This scenario is closer to me asking why I can’t claim the copyright of the things I took a photograph of, and only the photograph itself. The answer usually being because I didn’t make those things, somebody/something else did, I only made the photo.
Edit: Posted this without realising I hadn’t finished my last paragraph. Oops
It’s honestly pretty much the same with ai, there’s lots of settings, tweaking, prompt writing, masking and so on… that you need to set up in order to get the result you desire.
A photographer can take shitty pictures and you can make shitty stuff with AI but you can also use both tools to make what you want and put lots of work into it.
The difference is it’s not you making the art.
The photographer is the one making the photo, it is their skill in doing ehat I described above that directly makes the photo. Whereas your prompts, tweaking, etc. are instructions for an AI to make the scenery for you based on other people’s artwork.
I actually have a better analogy for you…
If I trained a monkey to take photos, no matter how good my instructions or the resulting photo are, I don’t own those photos, the monkey does. Though in actuality, the work goes to the public domain in lieu as non-human animals cannot claim copyright.
If you edit that monkey’s photo, you own the edit, but you still don’t own the photo because the monkey took it.
The same should, does currently seem to, apply to AI. It is especially true when that AI is trained on information you don’t hold copyright or licensing for.
Actually… If an animal you own/trained makes art… you did get to have the copyright to the art, until recently with these same legal developments. Now it’s less clear.
I also agree more with the other posters interpretation in general. We copyright art made by random chance emergent effects (Polluck et al.), process based art (Morris Louis et al.), performance art (so many examples… Adrian Piper comes to mind), ephemeral art, math art, and photography, as the poster says. None of those artists are fully in control of every aspect of the final project- the art makes itself, in part, in each example.
If a human uses a math equation for the geometric output of a printer, and they tweak the variables to get the best looking output, we consider that art by law. Ai is exactly the same.
It’s funny, I find that illustrators hate ai art, but “studio” artists (for lack of a better term) usually adore it
Actually… If an animal you own/trained makes art… you did get to have the copyright to the art, until recently with these same legal developments. Now it’s less clear.
If you’re referring to Wikimedia’s infamous Monkey Selfie Dispute, which is the case I’m most aware of, then the reason its less clear is because its hard to determine the sufficient amount of human creativity required to render a human copyright over an animals work.
I’d argue that last bit doesn’t apply to the AI, because while you do provide inspiration in terms of your prompting, tweaking, etc., it is ultimately always the AI that interprets those prompts and creates the artwork. Supervising an AI is not the same thing as setting up and taking a photograph, or drawing a painting.
We copyright art made by random chance emergent effects (Polluck et al.), process based art (Morris Louis et al.), performance art (so many examples… Adrian Piper comes to mind), ephemeral art, math art, and photography, as the poster says. None of those artists are fully in control of every aspect of the final project- the art makes itself, in part, in each example.
If you’re going to cite artists, it would be a good idea to at least link their work for context for those who aren’t in the know… As I don’t know these artists, I can’t make an informed response, so I’ll move on.
If a human uses a math equation for the geometric output of a printer, and they tweak the variables to get the best looking output, we consider that art by law. Ai is exactly the same.
There’s a big difference between a human designing a math formula to output a desired geometry, and a human instructing an AI to do the same.
By having the AI do the artistic work, it’ll always be the one making the artistic choices based on your instruction, and therefore the art is not yours to own.
Actually, that’s a really good analogy, and it helped me think about this in a different way.
What if the monkey is the camera in this situation, and the training the monkey part is like designing the sensor on the camera. You can copyright the sensor design(AI Model), and the photo taken using the sensor (output), so the same should apply to AI art, shouldn’t it?
You’re losing the analogy here because these things aren’t analogous. You can only copyright what comes out of the sensor because you took the photograph. Not everything that comes out of a camera sensor is copyrightable, such as photos taken by non-humans.
There’s a fundemental difference between a tool that functions directly as a consequence of what you do, and an independent thing that acts based on your instruction. When you take a photo, you have a direct hand in making it - when you direct an AI to make art, it is the one making the art, you just choose what it makes.
When you take a photo, you have a direct hand in making it - when you direct an AI to make art, it is the one making the art, you just choose what it makes.
I understand what you mean, but you’re still directing the Camera; you’re placing it, adjusting the shot, perfecting lighting etc. Isn’t AI art the same? You have a direct hand in making what you want; through prompting, controlnet, Loras and whatever new thing comes along.
No, because the human involvement in creating AI art is so little that it’s considered de minimis --i.e. so minimal that it’s not worth talking into account. All you’re doing is putting a prompt into the generator–regardless of how much time and effort you put into crafting the prompt, it’s the AI interpreting that prompt and deciding how to convert it into an image, not you. In comparison, when you take a photograph, you’re interpreting the scene, you’re deciding that the object you’re photographing is interesting enough for a photo, you’re deciding what should and shouldn’t be in the shot, you’re deciding the composition of the shot, and you’re deciding what settings and filters to use in the shot.
It’s like the difference between someone taking a sketch of a model and making 20 revisions/alterations to the sketch before inking/coloring it, and a picky commissioner paying an artist to draw something and asking the artist to make 20 revisions before approving color/lines.
The camera simply puts what you see through the viewfinder into a form that can be stored, you’re the one who decides everything about the shot.
Whereas no matter how good your prompting is, it is ultimately the AI who interprets your parameters, who creates the images for you. It is the one doing the artistic work.
Do you not notice the difference? As I said in my last reply, your camera is a tool that functions directly as a consequence of what you do. An AI acts independently of you based on your instruction. It is not the same thing.
Also, I absolutely agree with @Eccitaze
The scene isn’t copyrighted, anyone could go to the scene (theoretically) and take their own photo from a different angle. What’s copyrighted is the expression that went into staging the shot.
An AI tool is the one doing the creative expression when generating its images is the argument. The prompt is where the creative expression of the user ends, and copyrighting just a phrase seems ridiculous. I tend to agree with these sort of arguments, especially when models like this are often trained on other people’s copyright work.
Am I the only one that think the longue they reject it, the more it will participate to it’s story behind, and make it worth more and more, and make it more and more “outrageous” and continue etc to make it have more worth?
US has a shitty copyright system. Got it.
