In an article on PetaPixel it was reported today that the US Copyright Office has reversed its recent decision on granting copyright to AI-generated imagery. Specifically, the Office said it had erred in granting copyright to images contained in a graphic novel, Zarya of the Dawn, by Kris Kashtanova as those images had been generated through the use of Midjourney and were therefore "not the product of human authorship."
I must respectfully disagree with the Office's decision since in my own opinion, which is certainly not intended as a legal opinion, images generated with the assistance of AI are most definitely products of human authorship inasmuch as it is the human author's specific prompts that are responsible for the appearance and content of the images that are produced. To deny the human's role in the process is to me somewhat akin to holding that a photographer should not be granted copyright to his images since they were actually taken by a camera. In my view, AI image generators such as Midjourney are really no more than tools that an artist uses to give form to his vision just as the camera is a tool used by the photographer, through adjustments to its settings, to capture an image as he or she envisions it. Obviously, neither the camera nor the AI image generator spews out images of its own volition without human input.
It will be interesting to see if the Office's decision is appealed and, if so, what the final outcome will be. I think that at bottom the real problem is that all forms of technology are advancing so quickly in the 21st century that it is often difficult for laws and rulings to keep up with them.
No comments:
Post a Comment