AI-Created Comic Has Been Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection

CBR.com:

The United States Copyright Office (USCO) reversed an earlier decision to grant a copyright to a comic book that was created using "A.I. art," and announced that the copyright protection on the comic book will be revoked, stating that copyrighted works must be created by humans to gain official copyright protection.

This is so interesting on several levels.

The USCO says that works “must be created by humans” but doesn’t seem to define what “created” means clearly.

At what point in the creation process does the USCO determine that computer-enhanced artworks are no longer “created by humans”? Could Photoshop be too much AI? What about auto-generated insights on BI platforms producing visualisations? Where is the line drawn?

The artist pleads that “prompting” the AI is the artwork, and I sympathise with that argument.

However, where this argument is a little weak is that the AI in question is drawing from human-produced work —as are many AI systems— from other artists and does not necessarily have permission to be included in the model to create “copy writable” works. And as we’ve recently discovered, there’s a growing dispute about whether or not there is a legal basis for training an AI model using images etc., without the owner’s consent.

28 December 2022 — French West Indies

Matthew Cowen @matthewcowen