this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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231
US appeals court says AI authors don't qualify for copyright. (go.theregister.com)
submitted 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Computer scientist Stephen Thaler again told his 'Creativity Machine' can't earn a ©

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

This guy's court cases are widely misunderstood by the general public.

In a nutshell: he's a crank who is trying to tell the court "I don't hold a copyright to the thing my AI produced, my AI holds the copyright."

And the court tells him: "Only people (or legal persons, like corporations) can hold a copyright. Your AI cannot. If you say that you yourself don't either, we can't force you to have a copyright on it. So I guess that thing has no copyright and is therefore in the public domain."

And then everyone gasps and exclaims "the court just ruled that AI-generated things are in the public domain!"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 34 minutes ago

Well, AI-generated things are in the public domain since as you said, they can't be copyrighted, LegalEagle on youtube actually brought this up, but it was in regards to NFTs and how those were almost all AI generated therefore you can't buy it's copyright and own it.

He also talked about a case of a famous picture where a monkey (or whatever a primate) took a picture with a photographers camera and then he wanted to sue for copyright infringement and it was tossed because the monkey was the author and only humans can have copyright.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Before anyone gets excited:

The Court of Appeals did, however, acknowledge that works made by a person with the assistance of AI can qualify for copyright, while also noting that no legal standard defines the amount of human participation necessary for such recognition.

I think the primary motivation for this guy to doggedly pursue this case, is so he could claim ownership over anything this/future model(s) produced, regardless of his involvement. It would've set a bad precedent in a lot of ways.

Anyway, people/corpos can still click a button to generate shit and claim copyright since the court acknowledges that any miniscule amount of human involvement qualifies.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Thomas Kinkade did this with art prints in the 90s and 00s. Mass print them and then have ‘trained artists’ go in and add a little highlighting, and charge a premium for it.

Behind the Bastards has a good 2 part episode on him.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Yup.

Kinkade was a no-talent ass clown, like the people who use AI to produce works of "art".

[–] deranger 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Was Kinkade misrepresenting the production process or something? If not- who cares? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

He was stretching the truth as much as possible to convince local art dealers to sell his stuff as an investment, got sued for it, and (spoiler if you’re wanting to listen to the episodes) may or may not have intentionally killed himself to avoid going to trial over it.

[–] deranger 3 points 7 hours ago

Ah, I see. Yeah that’s pretty bastardly.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Excellent don’t encourage this slop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

AI authors - not the human users - the AI themselves, Mister Anderson.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 hours ago

Humans only, well established. Sad these people as are so willing to throw money at lawyers for cases they can't win

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

So, if i rip off an AI author, I will only owe royalties to the author the AI ripped off?