Um, no. Copyright exists and it applies to everything that is copyrightable. It doesn’t go away when you slap AI onto your imitative ML model.
Yes, and personal use exists so that people who are not profiting in any way off of someone else’s copyright are not chargeable under copyright law. Hence why I can download a jpg of an artists painting and that action alone is not breaking any law.
If my AI is not being used to make money, and it is also not being used to slander someone or harass someone, then what law exactly would I be breaking? How would I be harming someone else, by having an AI that I use solely personally and am in no way benefiting from? Can you sue someone for taking a DVD, ripping it, and then rearranging the scenes in a new video file? Have they broken a law solely by creating a derivative work using the original material, even if that work is not making them money and they are commiting no other crime using that work?
personal use exists
That would be news to me. Could you give a source for that? Because it’d mean I would be allowed to copy movies, music etc. for my “personal use” and also give them away because I’m not seeking profit, right?
Copyright extends everywhere, no matter what use. There are certain specific limits such as licenses, fair use and private copies but outside of those, no, you may not make a copy and yes, even loading a file into memory counts as “making a copy”.
How could you save a png then? We’re talking about digital files where you can absolutely copy a file without facing any legal repercussions for doing so. Copy paste is the same as making a copy of a work and would make sense under copyright law to be illegal. But its not because that’s ridiculous, and no one will ever be charged for going to Google image search and looking at a copyrighted picture on the screen. Its also not illegal for humans to learn from the art of someone else and then create similar art. I dont know how you can or would be able to even detect that someone has trained an AI for this purpose. Training modern AI with pre-made models to draw a specific person or character in a specific art style is trivial. Its hard to do it if you’re unfamiliar but it requires very few training materials to become very effective. ControlNet and LORA have made this possible. So how could you even tell if someone made such a model, they’ve only downloaded a dozen pictures and there is no effective way to tell that they’ve then trained this model. It would have to come down to their creations being noticeable enough to charge them. Either through profiting from it or by posting that content online.
Personal use is a misnomer by me, what I meant was fair use.
Yes, but training is not infringement under current law.
If you learn to draw by tracing Mickey Mouse, but then professionally draw original works, you haven’t infringed copyright.
If you subsequently draw Mickey Mouse, you’ll hear from Disney’s lawyers.
So yes, AI producing IP protected material when prompted results in infringement, just as any production would.
The thing people seem to be up in arms about are things like copying style (not protected) or using for training (not infringing).
If anything, all of this discussion over the past year around AI has revealed just how little people understand about IP laws. They complain that there needs to be laws for things already protected and prohibited, and they complain that companies are infringing for things that are not protected nor prohibited.
For example, in relation to the OP question, in the US there is no federal protection around IP rights for voices and case law to the opposite.
If you learn to draw by tracing Mickey Mouse, but then professionally draw original works, you haven’t infringed copyright.
Tracing Mickey is already copyright infringement. It’s insane but that’s how it works.
I think copyright is a weird idea in this day and age where you’re almost always standing on the shoulders of giants too but that doesn’t make it go away. Best we can do is hack it (copyleft).
copying style (not protected)
Not copyrightable but I’m not sure whether a style could be trademarked instead.
using for training (not infringing)
Whether that’s infringing or not is hotly debated topic. Key point here is whether training falls under fair use. If it doesn’t, training on copyrighted material without a license would be infringing under most jurisdictions.
in the US there is no federal protection around IP rights for voices and case law to the opposite.
Because US == world. I’d love to leave this implication behind on Reddit.
You think tracing for educational use which is then never distributed such that it could not have a negative impact on market value is infringement?
What the generative AI field needs moving forward is a copyright discriminator that identifies infringing production of new images.
But I’ll be surprised if cases claiming infringement on training in and of itself end up successful under current laws.
And yeah, most of the discussion around this revolves around US laws. If we put aside any jurisdiction then there is no conversation to be had. Or we could choose arbitrary jurisdictions to support a position, for example Israel and Japan which have already said training is fair use.
