Under US copyright law, only works created by humans can be copyrighted. Courts have (imho rightly) denied copyrights to AI-generated images.
My question is when do you think AI image tools cross from the realm of a “tool” (that, for example generates and fills in a background so an item can be removed from a photo) into the realm of “a human didn’t make this”?
What if an artist trains an AI so specialized it only makes their style of art? At what point do you think the images they create with it begin to count as their “work product”?
It depends on the net worth of the artist.
No, the artist didn’t make it
I’m a bit confused. If I use AI to generate an image, then modify it, can I claim copyright? And how would anyone know if I used an AI? I know there are telltale signs that computer algorithms were involved, so I guess the question is how much does the artist have to contribute before it’s no longer considered non-human art? Or does any use of AI tools invalidate the copyright?
Yeah that’s exactly what I’m getting at - when does a tool stop being a tool and start being a non-human creator? It’ll be interesting to see how courts suss it out…
Yes, AI contribution is an area that needs legal clarification. I know you brought the question up for graphic arts, but the same thing is happening with music. I can use an AI tool to generate tracks, tweak them to my taste, then supply lyrics that are also at least partially generated by AI. But if I never admit that I used AI, it’s probably impossible to detect.
What makes this really interesting is that entertainment industry workers went on strike partly because of AI fears, yet would the resulting productions be copyrightable?
OP, please reword your post to be an open-ended question.
This would be an ideal test case for the law. If an artist uses a computer as a tool in the creation of a work, then they retain copyright. Consider a 3D animation. The artist does not manually and with intent create the highlights, shadows, and (often) textures, etc. They are emergent properties of the way the computer generates the image based on the artist’s inputs.
Lots of fine artists use computer generated elements, such as 3d printed patterns, photo collages, iterative designs, etc.
It seems that the legal question would be whether generative images are categorically distinct from other types of computer aided creation. It’s hard to imagine an argument that an artist created the data, wrote a program to use the data to train a model, used the model to generate an image, created some type of prompt, and published the output… but doesn’t own the output. It would be an interesting argument anyway.
