Ooh, the US copyright office makes a decision! And, I think, clearly a bad one! :) I should weblog, but I'm too lazy right now.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/ai-created-images-lose-us-copyrights-test-new-technology-2023-02-22/
(And are they in danger of declaring large swathes of photography not-copyrightable?)
In retrospect, "clearly a bad one" may be uncharitable. :) I am perhaps empathizing too much with the creators of art whose creatorship is now in legal doubt. But this may have been the best, or one of the best, that the Office could do, until the courts or the legislature clarify the situation for them.
My brain will probably force me to Weblog about it soon.
I did eventually weblog. Just some initial thoughts...
https://ceoln.wordpress.com/2023/02/23/the-us-copyright-office-takes-a-position/
@ceoln I'd sooner abolish copyright all together, but seems to me that if you edit the image enough then you can claim the copyright on the final edited one and delete the original AI-generated one.
How much editing is enough? Nobody will ever know.
It's work-for-hire I guess. Usually when I hire someone to do the work I get the copyright even though they made it, and I had about the level of creative input as writing a prompt.
@pre
There is various case law on how much modification is needed to have a new copyrightable thing, and the memo refers to it. They appear to be assuming that the requirements are the same as if the original image was #copyright by the software, and the user was (with permission) creating a separately copyrightable derivative work. I think!
They also address work for hire, but as in Thaler they are denying the theory that the human has the copyright because they 'hired' the software which is the creator -in- fact. That seems a bit Catch 22 to me, and I say a little about that in the weblog.
A key sentence:
"Consistent with the law, the Office will not knowingly register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without sufficient creative input or intervention from a human author."
The "produced by a machine or a mere mechanical process" part seems uninteresting; the actual criterion is "without sufficient creative input or intervention from a human author". What is sufficient? I may have to read in more detail to see if this is any more than an "I know it when I see it...".