> The outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts. <a href="https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2025/1060.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2025/1060.html</a><p>I think that this means that a single prompt alone does not convey copyright. But if you had spent many hours before the prompt fine tuning the model, or much effort after the prompt shaping the result with further prompts, it could be.<p>I disagree with this approach because I've seen how much creativity and effort some people can put into slowly evolving a single elaborate prompt. AI can be used as another kind of brush. A prompt can be a masterpiece.
I don't think this is the correct interpretation. I think they mean that if you make something without AI and then modify that with AI, that's covered. Likewise, if you start from an AI output and modify it, that's covered.<p>But the pure output of a generative model cannot be copyrighted, regardless of how complex the prompt is (note that the prompt itself could be copyrighted).
This is how I understood the original decision a while back - that there had to be some additional element of human involvement post-"gen", though to what extent is still a bit unclear to me.<p>What's the threshold? Can the person just slap an LUT on an SDXL image in Photoshop and call it a day?
> But the pure output of a generative model cannot be copyrighted, regardless of how complex the prompt is<p>If that’s how the court interpreted it, then the software industry is <i>hosed</i>, since that’d mean none of the generated code running in production right now is under any sort of copyright or otherwise protection, lol.
I doubt that much software is entirely AI-generated with no human review or testing, it’s probably more like integrating some public domain snippets you found online into your code (which doesn’t invalidate copyright on the rest of it, or the way it’s put together) or having some files auto-generated by a script (like a C header containing a lookup table for a simple mathematical function, the table isn’t copyrightable itself maybe but the software as a whole still is)
> A prompt can be a masterpiece.<p>So the true Renaissance artists are the Medicis and the RC church?<p>> how much creativity and effort<p>So art is art prompting, or is it creativity and effort? If some toddler spends two hours on a drawing, it's a masterpiece?<p>> AI can be used as another kind of brush.<p>A simile does not a truth make.
Its interesting you mention a toddler drawing for 2 hours - I can say with certainty that toddler drawing will demonstrate more creativity than this argument and, every iteration of it, I see every single day. Smh<p>Actual creators understand what creativity is and what creation is - not all creation even is creative, as its really more of a process, than it is a singular output, and there are monotonous, time consuming, meticulously frustrating parts of the process of creation.<p>If you want to limit yourself to creation without the quality of life enhancements, that exist in this time and space - you do you.<p>Don't proselytize tho - you are not doing what you think you are.
> AI can be used as another kind of brush. A prompt can be a masterpiece<p>What a joke. No, AI is not a brush, it is a slop machine that spits out derivatives of the actual masters. If you go back and forth with a human artist about a commission where you keep nitpicking and wanting adjustments, does that make you the artist? No, it makes you the “ideas guy”
> spits out derivatives of the actual masters<p>A brief history of art in general.
Wait till you learn about comparator mirrors. And renaissance artist studios.
Let's say the AI prompt is "Make it black and white". Why does taking a photo and making it gray scale in photoshop result in a copyrightable piece of art, but using an AI model makes the resulting output slop? They seem equivalent to me.
I'll distill it down into something you might understand a bit easier. On social media, such as Instagram, or Tiktok, you'll find a bit of a meme going around that shows the difference between an influencer video of a vacation destination and then a follow-up video from someone with their iPhone, often showing overcrowding of tourists, brown water where there was blue; with these videos often with a poor-sounding Recorder being played over them (I forget the song that it's attempting to play).<p>The difference between the "real" video and the "influencer" video is the artistry from the artist(s) involved. (And yes, top influencers often have a person or a team of people involved)
It's not about image modifications, it's about creation. Furthermore, half a similarity on a small aspect doesn't undermine the argument.
Because you're unable to understand art, honestly. Photography isn't just "taking a photo and making a grayscale image in Photoshop"; but rather a combination of a couple of different artistic expression styles that involve understanding how to use the tools you have (a camera, the lens, film or a sensor, and lighting) to capture an expression of an event. Technically speaking, a photo of a mountain isn't just a "photo of a mountain" that you would maybe throw into AI slop--but an actual, legitimate photo of a mountain and how it's captured and presented (no matter the post processing done) <i>is</i> an actual artistic expression of the capture of that mountain. Because absolutely nothing, nothing at all will capture actually standing there looking at the mountain. A photo is the best approximation, and sometimes doesn't even have to be, depending on what the artist wants to express with the image.<p>In short, your inability to understand photography doesn't justify the use of AI slop to prompt "give me a grayscale image of a mountain" and assume that it's the same thing as a human being taking an actual photo. They're not even close to the same thing.
> AI can be used as another kind of brush. A prompt can be a masterpiece.<p>Sorry, but... cringe. If we are calling prompts "masterpieces" now - letting alone the image generated by it - maybe we don't deserve art at all.
>> I disagree with this approach because I've seen how much creativity and effort some people can put into slowly evolving a single elaborate prompt. AI can be used as another kind of brush. A prompt can be a masterpiece.<p>Absolute nonsense. A work of art is made of semantic stratification, experience, thought process.
A prompt lacks all that.
AI art can be a tool, but this sentence is a good reminder that on average it’s worth shit all.
Don't forget that the human artist spends hours training on art that predates them, and, in my opinion, that training predisposes the artist to unconsciously replicate elements of art they've trained on previously.
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> Thaler’s request to copyright an image, called A Recent Entrance to Paradise, on behalf of an algorithm he created.<p>The courts just take issue with him naming his AI system as the sole author and himself as the copyright owner.<p>If you just copyright it normally with yourself as the author, seems like it would be fine to copyright whatever bs you want?
Bingo. If he was the creator and owner, it would have been fine.
Claiming that you digitally painted it? (Fraud?)<p>I mean, I guess lying is something you could do.
Photography is a copyrightable art, but don't say that most of the work is actually done by a machine. Or even by the engineer who built the machine. You could argue that the photographer just presses a button and, perhaps, airbrushes it later in photoshop, and yet that's art.
It's not copyrightable automatically, you have to argue that you did have an artistic input (e.g. composition). Typically nobody bothers to argue against copyrightability of a photo, but there's been a few cases.
Do you know of any sources that talk about this? I tried to do a bit of searching and the closest I found was the .gov site [0] that did make a similar-ish claim, but was vague enough (at least to me, a non-lawyer), that it doesn't seem to rule out that every photo taken by an individual is copywriteable<p>>First, copyright protects original works of authorship, including original photographs. A work is original if it is independently created and is sufficiently creative. Creativity in photography can be found in a variety of ways and reflect the photographer’s artistic choices like the angle and position of subject(s) in the photograph, lighting, and timing.<p>I find it hard to imagine a photo taken by someone where it <i>couldn't</i> be argued that those elements exist. I guess the photographer would have to explicitly tell the court something like "no, I put no thought into it whatsoever, the camera was hanging off my bag and the shutter button was pressed accidentally". Like, if a human purposefully took a photo, then they have made choices about location, subject, etc. which have some element of "creativity" to them.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.copyright.gov/engage/photographers/" rel="nofollow">https://www.copyright.gov/engage/photographers/</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannion_v._Coors_Brewing_Co" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannion_v._Coors_Brewing_Co</a>.<p>I remember there being a somewhat similar case in (I think?) Netherlands a few years ago, but currently can't find it.
Tell me you cant take good photos without telling me you cant take good photos. Photographers have the skill of colour, framing, perspective, and timing.... and if its nature, they also have to carry heavy bags of camera gear along with their hiking gear and bear spray etc and go out and then cpture photos....national geographic literally made its career off photos.....do you think about what orher weird takes you may have and never notice how wrong they are?
A common technique in paint print shops is to print the piece on canvas, then “add” color to it in globs of acrylic that match, making it stand off from the canvas. A very quick a clever trick to recreate multiples of a piece.
Initialize an algorithm to point your camera at the street and write those bytes to disk and you are the author of a perpetual stream of data.<p>Initialize an algorithm to point your camera at the street and describe those bytes in words and you are no longer the author a perpetual stream of data.<p>In a world where slapping an overlay of someone looking incredulous over someone else's video is considered "adding substantive commentary" by every major video sharing platform, I don't even try to understand copyright law at all. It is way over my head.
If it makes seven figures of revenue, there is a real system in place to litigate copyright disputes between corporations. Two kaijiu summoned by ritual magic to fight for the future of the franchise / giant pile of money.<p>Everything else in the entire system is just bits of monster and building falling randomly. We know if we put the whole population under strict scrutiny ("laser eyes" + "lightning wings"), it would kill every last one of them; every teenager is theoretically criminally liable for the GDP of the Milky Way, a series of violations beginning with a performance of The Birthday Song at their first cake day. Even hiring the cheapest defense lawyer would bankrupt nearly any family in the nation. So we try imperfectly to dodge copyright, hopefully by a couple zip codes, and live in a state of nature on the ground.
> slapping an overlay of someone looking incredulous over someone else's video is considered<p>it really isn't, you actually have to provide enough relevant commentary for it to be transformative<p>it just looks like that because<p>- not every claim leads to a take down, more common is that the advertisement revenue is redirected to the owner of the original video. That is very very common, especially on YT, but not really visible as viewer.<p>- there are enough copyright holders which overall tolerate reactions, even if they don't fall under fair use.<p>- Sometimes people claim it doesn't fall under fair use when they don't like how the reaction is done, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be ruled fair uses if it came in front of court.<p>- Sometimes people reacting have explicit permission from the original author to do so, no matter if it counts as fair use or not.<p>and maybe most relevant here, pretty much all large platforms have a tendency to favor the person claiming the copyright violation over the person which reacted to it. To a point there is is sometimes a big problem if systematically abused with false claims.
Those two hypothetical scenarios you listed don’t necessarily work the way you are describing it, which is why the whole logic and mechanisms behind the US copyright laws might seem incomprehensible or illogical to you.<p>In reality, it is way more complex and less clear-cut. Which makes sense, because oversimplifying it will lead to silly-sounding conclusions and an almost entirely incorrect understanding of how this works.<p>For those who don’t want to read the actual full explanation (which is a totally normal position, as the explanation is going fairly into the weeds), I will just a put a TLDR summary at the end. I suggest everyone to check out that summary first, and then come back here if there is interest in a more detailed explanation.<p>----------------------------<p>First, we gotta settle on 3 key concepts (among many) the US copyright law relies on.<p>1. Human authorship - self-explanatory; you cannot assign authorship to a fish or your smartphone.<p>2. Original/minimal creativity - some creative choices, not just "I pressed the button."<p>3. Fixation - the content needs to be recorded on a tangible medium; you cannot copyright a "mood" or a thought, since those aren’t tangible media.<p>Now onto your hypothetical scenarios:<p>1) "Initialize an algorithm to point your camera at the street and write those bytes to disk and you are the author of a perpetual stream of data."<p>Writing bytes to disk satisfies fixation, but it doesn’t automatically make you the author of a copyrightable work. You gotta satisfy the minimum creativity requirement too (e.g., camera positioning, setup, any other creative choices/actions, etc.). Otherwise you are just running a fully automated security cam feed with zero human input, and those videos aren’t easily copyrightable (if at all). You might own copyright in a video work if there’s sufficient human creative authorship - but mere automated recording doesn’t guarantee that.<p>2) "Initialize an algorithm to point your camera at the street and describe those bytes in words and you are no longer the author a perpetual stream of data."<p>This is just close to being plainly incorrect. If you (a human) write a textual description, that text is typically copyrightable as a literary work (assuming it’s not purely mechanical like "frame 1: car, frame 2: another car, etc." with no expressive choices). Creating a description doesn’t erase any copyright you may or may not have had in the underlying recording. They’re just different works (audiovisual work vs. text work).<p>Important to note: neither makes you the author or owner of the underlying "data" of reality, because copyright protects expression, not the underlying facts.<p>----------------------------<p>TLDR:<p>* Recording the street can produce a copyrightable work if there is human authorship and minimal creativity in how the recording is made. Pure automated capture may fail that.<p>* Describing the street in words is usually a separate, independently copyrightable work (e.g., a text or audio version of those words), but it doesn’t change the status of the underlying recording.
But how does that apply to photography vs AI photo generation?<p>Photo (w/ camera):
1. MET: Human authorship - somebody picked the tools (lens, body) and used them.<p>2. MET: Creativity - somebody chose a subject, lighting, etc.<p>3. MET: Fixation - film (or SD card)<p>Photo (w/ AI):
1. MET: Human authorship - somebody picked the tools (models etc) and used them.<p>2. MET, maybe?: Creativity - somebody wrote the prompt, provided inputs, etc. (how is this substantially different than my wife taking a random snapshot on her phone?)<p>3. MET: Written to disk, same as a digital camera.
AI-generated art can't be copyrighted, fine. But what does this mean for the huge spectrum between "I did some fingerpainting" and "Nano Banana spat out this painting"?<p>What if I use Photoshop and context-aware fill a cloud in? Is that AI-generated or human-generated art?
They cover this. It has to have "substantial human authorship".<p>So if you start with something you truly made, it would be difficult to use so much context aware fill to negate that.<p>If you start with something AI generated,at what point does it become copywritable? This is less clear.<p>But that's fine, because the decision does not torpedo anyone's existing Photoshop workflows.
most likely counts as AI-assisted art, which is copyrightable with you as the owner<p>like most things copyright there is a gray area there<p>but in most cases it's either pretty clear and courts would most likely rule in your (copyright holder) if you somehow manage to hit the perfect middle of the gray area<p>through if you tell the court "the author is my AI" (like in this case), the outcome is pretty obvious<p>also for better understanding using AI doesn't erase copyright, it just doesn't add it. So if you image was copyrightable before you used an AI tool to change it will stay copyrightable (as long as the original image is still in there to a reasonable degree).
I wonder if Nano Banana spits out an image and I copy it by hand into a different medium like acrylics, chalk, or charcoal. Does a manual transcription suddenly render the image worthy of copyright?<p>This also raises the meta question: how much does an image need to change to acquire a new copyright? For example, if you change the Last Supper to include two fat Jesuses on either side of the single skinny Jesus, is that enough?
I feel like the more important question here is whether AI-generated <i>code</i> can be copyrighted.<p>Companies responsible for several billion dollars worth of software written over the past ~36 months would really like to know the answer to that one.
I would assume that the same
“substantial human authorship” criterion applies. Copyright is about human creativity, it doesn’t otherwise matter if something is art, prose, typesetting, or code.
It doesn't really matter as long as you keep physical control of the code and don't let others copy it.
That would effectively rely on the doctrine of trade secret rather than copyright. A major difference is that accidental or malicious disclosure of a trade secret usually ends the trade secret status, forever. In an alternate universe where computer source code had never been copyrightable, famous leaks (Microsoft Windows, 2004; id Quake, 1997) would have effectively open-sourced those codebases, and other companies could have openly and legally used them.<p>As source code becomes more of a generated artifact of software development the way object code is an artifact of compilation, we might be moving toward a world where secrecy, constant forward motion, and moats become even more of an asset (vs plain IP protection).
Nor does it matter if code has no value.<p>I do think what happens in this case is SCOTUS will ultimately rule that AI-built code <i>is</i> copyrightable while art is not. I'm sure there's some rationale thick enough for them.
So I can reverse engineer in peace without Nintendo ninjas lawyers coming after me?
Can you imagine the chaos if suddenly all the slop code wasn’t owned by the company? Even though that result would be consistent with this ruling, it undermines the narrative the economy is now riding on, so there will likely be special exemption.
Long standing well known issue, no copyright (in many countries) and (in some countries) non patentable, too.<p>Through this isn't true for AI assisted art.<p>And the gray area is very wide and very legal unclear (gray area between human art with AI assistance (e.g. "AI"/transformer architecture based line smoothing or color calibration) and AI art with human touch added to it).
If we're going to allow AI companies to use copyrighted material in training, the absolute least we could do is prevent copyright of the outputted content.
Can you use "I believed this was AI generated" as a copyright defense now?
I don't think this article's analysis is accurate. The "human authorship" in Thaler's case wasn't about the abstract concept of human authorship; he literally did not put his name in the "authorship" field of the form, and insisted on review that his name doesn't belong there because he's not the author.<p>So the ruling doesn't necessarily endorse the Copyright Office's analysis referenced in the article (<a href="https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...</a>), and I think that analysis is just not correct. They describe a creator of AI art as simply "re-rolling the dice" when they try different prompts, but that's not correct, clever prompt engineering definitely allows you to "constrain or channel the program’s processing of the sourcenmaterial" and "alter[] the degree of control over the process"
does that mean movies with AI generated art can be repackaged and sold by anyone?
I wonder by that logic, can AI generated art violate other’s copyright?
AI usage doesn't remove copyright, it just doesn't gain any new copyright by itself<p>so a AI based transformation of a copyrighted input is as much a potential copyright violation as a non AI based transformation.<p>It's just that the human transformation can by potentially itself be seen as art, so if you have a license or fair use you now can have copyright on the transformed peace (with some limitations (1)). And if the transformation is done by AI you won't (but the original authors "partial" copyright on the outcome is still there).<p>(1): Like if you (human) "transform" a peace of art in 1000 different ways each keeping 0.001% of the original you will likely get 1000x copyright. But if you then use this 1000 peaces you have copyright too to regenerate the original you still have full copyright infringement. In general the law doesn't care about your "trickery" trying to bend laws.
Add a single pixel manually
[dupe] Earlier: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47223022">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47223022</a>
Exactly 0 of the artists I know “generate” their images outright - AI generations are <i>always</i> part of a pretty typical artistic workflow.<p>The way I think of it is this: typical art creation starts from a blank canvas and the artist adds layer upon layer of what you want. Eventually something coherent (to the artist at least) pops out.<p>AI art starts from a canvas which is filled, and the artist changes the filled canvas to meet their perspective. It’s like those projects where people take a vintage painting and add Pokémon to it. Mostly the people I see using AI art are traditional artists who view it as a new medium in their process, very few “generate” and call it a day.
Why is "AI-generated code" not also "AI art"? What makes "AI-generated code" copyrightable then? Nothing! Being that everything will be made using AI in the future, the courts just suicided the copyright system! Or where exactly does art end and code begin? The same applies to documents and designs.<p>If I take your AI-generated code file and write it as an artsy-looking image, do I get to deny you copyright?
No-one has checked in court of AI-generated code is copyrightable.<p>Personally I hope it's not. To me, this is the best outcome for AI in general. If we are going to violate everyone's copyright training AIs, then it's only fair you don't get AI protection on the output.
it's about copyrighted content<p>so yes it applies to fully AI-generated code as much as to "AI art".<p>like with AI assisted art it doesn't apply to AI assisted coding<p>and yes if everything is fully AI generate there is no copyright anymore, that is by design!<p>Copyright is there to protect human creativity/time investment. If there is no creativity/time investment, then there is no reason for copyright to exist either. Having still copyright there would mean moving it from a law to protect creative work to a law to protect the privileged few which can afford to just mass generate "everything" with AI. That isn't just very undesirable, it's kinda plain evil, as it would mean screwing over the majority of humanity.<p>Naturally as mentioned that only applies to full AI products, not to AI assisted products in which case the "human contribution" and thinks resulting from it still have copyright.