• 0 Posts
  • 120 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle
  • Yes, this is what I said. Situations where a work can conceivably considered co-authored by a human, those components get copyright. However, whether that activit constitutes contribution and how is demarcated across the work is a case by case basis. This doesn’t mean any inpainting at all renders the whole work copyright protected–it means that it could in cases where it is so granular and directly corresponds to human decision making that it’s effectively digital painting. This is probably a higher bar than most expect but, as is not atypical with copyright, is a largely case by case quantitative/adjudicated vibes-based determination.

    The second situation you quoted is also standard and effectively stands for the fact that an ordered compilation of individually copyrighted works may itself have its own copyright in the work as a whole. This is not new and is common sense when you consider the way large creative media projects work.

    Also worth mentioning that none of this obviates the requirement that registrations reasonably identify and describe the AI generated components of the work (presumably to effectively disclaim those portions). It will be interesting to see a defense raised that the holder failed to do so and so committed a fraud on the Copyright Office and thus lost their copyright in the work as a whole (a possible penalty for committing fraud on the Office).


  • The CO didn’t say AI generated works were copyrightable. In fact, the second part of the report very much affirmed their earlier decisions that AI generated content is necessarily not protected under copyright. What you are probably referring to is the discussion the Office presented about joint works style pieces–that is, where a human performed additional creative contributions to the AI generated material. In that case, the portions such that they were generated by the human contributor are protected under copyright as expected. Further, they made very clear that what constitutes creative contribution and thus gets coverage is determined on a case by case basis. None of this is all that surprising, nor does it refute the rule that AI generated material, having been authored by something other than a human, is not afforded any copyright protection whatsoever.


  • For sure. I personally think our current IP laws are well equipped to handle AI generated content, even if there are many other situations where they require a significant overhaul. And the person you responded to is really only sort of maybe half correct. Those advocating for, e.g., there to be some sort of copyright infringement in training AI aren’t going to bat for current IP laws-- they’re advocating for altogether new IP laws effectively thar would effectively further assetize and allow even more rent seeking in intangibles. Artists would absolutely not come out ahead on this and it’s ludicrous to think so. Publishing platforms would make creators sign those rights away and large corporations would be the only ones financially capable of acting in this new IP landscape. The compromise also likely would be attaching a property right in the model outputs and so it would actually become far more practical to leverage AI generated material at commercial scale since the publisher could enforce IP rights on the product.

    The real solution to this particular issue is require all models that out materials to the public at large be open source and all outputs distributed at large be marked as generated by AI and thus being effectively in the public domain.








  • It could of course go up to the scotus and effectively a new right be legislated from the bench, but it is unlikely and the nature of these models in combination with what is considered a copy under the rubric copyright in the US has operated effectively forever means that merely training and deploying a model is almost certainly not copyright infringement. This is pretty common consensus among IP attorneys.

    That said, a lot of other very obvious infringement in coming out in discovery in many of these cases. Like torrenting all the training data. THAT is absolutely an infringement but is effectively unrelated to the question of whether lawfully accessed content being used as training data retroactively makes its access unlawful (it really almost certainly doesn’t).


  • I wouldn’t even call it algorithm-driven myopia but rather myopically-designed algorithmic idiocy. It isn’t wildly challenging to design a filter to capture semantic context before recommending action on a piece of text, even if the underlying reasoning is wildly petty ratfuckery. It isn’t just the petty meandering cruelty with these dumb pieces of shit, though that’s certainly enough to merit outrage. It’s the combination with historic incompetence that just exponentially amplifies that outrage. Here’s to a mario party to roll in 2026.


  • Even in your latter paragraph, it wouldn’t be an infringement. Assuming the art was lawfully accessed in the first place, like by clicking a link to a publicly shared portfolio, no copy is being encoded into the model. There is currently no intellectual property right invoked merely by training a model-- if people want there to be, and it isn’t an unreasonable thing to want (though I don’t agree it’s good policy), then a new type of intellectual property right will need to be created.

    What’s actually baffling to me is that these pieces presumably are all effectively public domain as they’re authored by AI. And they’re clearly digital in nature, so wtf are people actually buying?


  • If you are “torn” on whether it is a good thing to grant a wealthy campaign donor unfettered and unquestionably illegal access to government and bureaucratic infrastructure, with zero accountability or oversight, and who has displayed absolutely zero competence at managing any public institution (and in fact has a record of incompetence at managing private enterprises), then I honestly think you’re one of the millions of Americans who just needs to fuck off and stop contributing to adult decision-making. You’re simply not up to the task.




  • I really think this is wrong. These moves arguably harm large business even more than small ones because the complex supply chains that go into most large corporations’ goods are getting totally fucked by these tarrifs and the supplier agreements locking them probably more often than not do not give them a clear out for situations where the dumbest motherfuckers in the country elected their chief dumb motherfucker into the highest seat.

    Regardless, the ones most hurt by this are consumers, and especially those without the means and/or ability accommodate this fuckery.




  • Not everything is “pretend” but what you have identified is that all societal rules are participatory algorithms, and that includes money and laws. Money, or really wealth and value, are effectively resource allocation and prioritization algorithms. It’s why the very idea of individuals, or even organizational entities largely decouple from societal benefit, having comparable allocative power to actual societal management structures is batshit absurd.