[N] U.S. Copyright Office decides that Kris Kashtanova's AI-involved graphic novel will remain copyright registered, but the copyright protection will be limited to the text and the whole work as a compilation

Submitted by Wiskkey t3_1198k5j in MachineLearning

Letter from the U.S. Copyright Office (PDF file).

Blog post from Kris Kashtanova's lawyer.

>We received the decision today relative to Kristina Kashtanova's case about the comic book Zarya of the Dawn. Kris will keep the copyright registration, but it will be limited to the text and the whole work as a compilation.
>
>In one sense this is a success, in that the registration is still valid and active. However, it is the most limited a copyright registration can be and it doesn't resolve the core questions about copyright in AI-assisted works. Those works may be copyrightable, but the USCO did not find them so in this case.

My previous post about this case.

Related news: "The Copyright Office indicated in another filing that they are preparing guidance on AI-assisted art.[...]".

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CapaneusPrime t1_j9l1om8 wrote

As it should be.

From the lawyer's blog post,

> We received the decision today relative to Kristina Kashtanova's case about the comic book Zarya of the Dawn. Kris will keep the copyright registration, but it will be limited to the text and the whole work as a compilation. > > In one sense this is a success, in that the registration is still valid and active.

How is that a "success?" Literally no one was suggesting the author didn't have a valid copyright on the text or the composition.

> However, it is the most limited a copyright registration can be and it doesn't resolve the core questions about copyright in AI-assisted works.

Ummmm.... AI-assisted works were never in play here. These images were AI-created. Per the author's own depiction of the process.

> Those works may be copyrightable, but the USCO did not find them so in this case.

AI-assisted works may be copyrightable, yes, but that's not what you were representing.

There are many artists who are doing amazing work using Generative AI as a tool. This wasn't that.

The biggest problem is one of terminology, we don't have good terms to distinguish between someone who feeds a prompt into a Generative AI and and calls it a day and someone who uses a Generative AI as just another tool in their toolkit, so they all get lumped in together. This lawyer muddying the waters by suggesting Kashtanova's works were AI-assisted does no one any good.

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currentscurrents t1_j9l627o wrote

>Literally no one was suggesting the author didn't have a valid copyright on the text or the composition.

The copyright office initially indicated that it was considering revoked the copyright registration on the entire work.

>AI-assisted works were never in play here. These images were AI-created.

They're still AI-assisted, since the human directed the AI through the prompt process.

It's much like pointing a camera. You don't even need specific artistic intent to get copyright on camera images, your random snaps half-covered with your thumb are copyrighted too. As their lawyer points out, only a modicum of creativity is required for copyright.

Ultimately, the copyright office isn't the final authority on copyright; the courts are. One way or another, we will see a bunch of new case law being written in the next few years.

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sam__izdat t1_j9ni8rd wrote

> They're still AI-assisted

the USCO has (correctly) repeatedly rejected copyright for the raw output of image generators, where you asked the computer to paint you a pretty picture

the parallels with photography are tenuous at best, and it's not about effort but rather the total absence of creative involvement -- it's less photography and more "I found this on google image search" except your database is the model's latent space

it is a good thing that they elected to forego a radical expansion of the already nightmarish, bloated IP regime, where being first-to-access would have granted users (not artists) a blackstonian property right to the results of a text query

i don't need whoever's hoarding the most compute to mine the commons and automatically pump out self-generating, legally-enforceable NFTs, at an industrial scale, in perpetuity... the world has enough parasites as it is, without a new clan of digital landlords, thank you

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Wiskkey OP t1_j9l8lzi wrote

My take: It is newsworthy but not surprising that images generated by a text-to-image AI using a text prompt with no input image, with no human-led post-generation modification, would not be considered protected by copyright in the USA, per the legal experts quoted in various links in this post of mine.

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visarga t1_j9qvckw wrote

So, all you need to do is use a source image you made yourself, and then the whole image belongs to you. Nobody can extract just the AI contribution.

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