@chi11estpanda

1 year ago

The conversation of copyright by AI has actually been discussed for some time now wherein the US Patent and Trademark Office hosted a conference back in October 2021 to discuss this very matter. One of the more interesting points of discussion stem from a dispute dating back to 2011 regarding a selfie taken by a monkey where it was argued that a monkey cannot hold copyrights because it is a non-human creator (not being a legal person). This eventually lead the US Copyright Office to issue a statement in December of 2014 that reaffirmed that works created by a non-human, such as a photograph taken by a monkey, are not copyrightable. Although some argued that the photographer's role in the photographic process may have been sufficient to establishing a valid copyright claim (the photographer set the camera up on a tripod, preset the proper settings, and basically created the opportunity for the monkeys to take a "selfie" style picture or otherwise help the photographer take the intended close-up photo he couldn't get), it was ultimately not brought as a point of contention and the photos remain in the public domain because the "work's copyright cannot vest in a human, [and thus] it falls into the public domain" or more simply said, because it lacked a copyright holder. This inevitably served as the basis for a case that arose when an individual, who sourced the images, prepared and trained an AI model and whatnot for the said AI to generate art and wherein the individual and the AI were denied the ability to obtain any copyright over the "creative" works of the AI because it was considered to be created by a non-human. So similarly to the photographer's role arguably being sufficient to establish a valid copyright claim, it could be argued that the individual who prepared the source work and/or created the programming language of the AI to generate the artwork would be sufficient for establishing a valid copyright claim but apparently not. So to tie this all back to what you mentioned in your video and bare with me, currently nearing the end of 2022, as it stands from a legal perspective, copyright is not defined by the inspiration or creative aspects of a work, but seemingly rely more or less simply on whether or not the origin of creation is from a human. That being said, if copyright is more or less a right to "credit" of the work, it can be said that these applications of law further exacerbates the uncertainty being asked here whereby if an AI is incapable of holding copyright, how is it considered capable of violating copyright? In other words, if it can't take credit for itself in terms of copyright, is it somehow capable of taking credit from someone even if it can't metaphorically give that credit to itself? Lots of unanswered questions...

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