Software glitch revokes copyright protection for AI-generated comic book A glitch in the record-keeping software being piloted by the US Copyright Office (USCO) accidentally revoked the copyright registration of an AI-generated graphic novel. The application to copyright Zarya Of The Dawn, a comic book containing images created by the text-to-image tool Midjourney, was filed by Kris Kashtanova …
"I felt that this comic book wouldn't exist without my human input."
That's why she should get the copyright.
"I also didn't feel that it was made by a machine, because I'm a former software engineer and used to write code. "
Clearly a horrible software engineer as she missed the part where the machine made the majority of thing..
Again though, I think she should get the copyright. It doesn"t matter anymore who or what drew or painted it. However, it's sad for artists as the term "starving artist" might have to have a more extreme replacement... "homeless artist". Of course, there's people still making candles.
Surely the copyright exists on "the work" which the human author created, no matter what that work includes. I could create a book with photos of movie CGI in it and there should be no problem in granting me copyright on that work.
My take on this is that she used an AI as a tool, as opposed to that other guy who wants to get the AI itself as the copyright holder.
If it's a tool, then how is this that different to a word processor? A pen? A set of large dice with plot relevant actions on them (roll your own story), etc etc? The AI didn't think of what to do for making the end product, there would have been a fair amount of human interaction to get the AI to output that which was wanted (and having played around with Dall-E, easier said than done!), plus the plotting, scenario, and how it all fits together.
The AI doesn't deserve copyright any more than Bic does it one writes something with a biro. But she should, as the AI was a tool she used.
if you use Blender or Illustrator or something like that to help you create your artwork, you own the copyright on it.
Or use a ray-tracer to generate an image - you specified what goes where then used the programme to generate it. The computer is the tool, not the creator.
The owner of the AI also owns the copyright. That's how it works with human intelligences working to order, why not for AIs too?
Except I just decided I must be a lawyer really - an AI image is derivative of the training set, right? So every copyright owner of every image in the training set can claim copyright on every image the AI creates, right? Lemme test it in court, oh, pleeze pleeze plee-eeze!
If I made a comic book (or whatever) using some AI(*) then I just register any copyright under my name; not the name of a bloody computer.
I am utterly baffled why anyone would want to assign copyright to a computer or the software running on it. How do you pay the computer royalties? Just say it it was YOU that made the works! Nobody is going to say “no it wasn’t - it was that machine”. It’s a completely nonsensical discussion
(*) Today’s “AI” is definitely not intelligent. It’s clever but no more intelligent then a pencil. Why every new bit of software that is released these days has to have some “AI” tag attached to it is beyond me
The comic book presents a muddled situation and, if the copyright is upheld (which my guess says it will be) it is going to be gloriously misreported all over the place.
You can, IIRC, claim a copyright for a collection of non-copyrightable items taken as a whole, such as 'phone directory: the names and numbers are just basic facts, free for anyone to use and publish, but the way they are expressed can be copyrighted. On that basis, the comic as a whole is easily copyrightable, as a certain collection of images organised in a certain fashion (namely, to tell the specific story). It would not surprise me if a decision was made on those grounds alone, simply so that the USCO examiner can put their tick on it and not have to spend any more effort on deciding if the items being collected are copyrightable or not; let the next guy worry about that.
But when (if) copyright is granted just on that simple basis, it will be bound to be reported that the images from the AI were declared copyrightable. Lots of bushes will then be beaten up by people who have grabbed the wrong end of stick.
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