Can the work of AI be COPYRIGHTED?

Question

Interesting question...

Most country's copyright laws apply to persons or organizations, who own the copyrights to their work for some period of time; the time and conditions vary from country to country. Since AI is neither a person nor an organization, can any of an AI's work be copyrighted?

NamerOfStars · Accepted Answer

Years ago, I pondered the question of whether an alien life form could become President of the US. That would require the idea of citizenship being extended to other species, but that doesn't sound particularly unrealistic if they're demonstrably sentient. Beyond that, they'd need to be born here (not an issue, assuming they have live birth), and have lived here for a certain time (again, no problem).

It all comes down to what constitutes a "person". Modern "AI"s aren't that; they're just sophisticated pattern-recognition programs. They can compare, but not reason. Compare them with, say, HAL 9000, who COULD reason, and who consequently reconciled the contradictory instructions of "do everything you can to help the astronauts" and "don't tell the astronauts about the Jovian monolith" by simply killing them.

If AIs are deemed to have pesonhood, then by my understanding of US copyright law (which is by no means a certain thing), they COULD copyright their works. If not, they'd go to whoever was operating them.

There's an interesting parallel case in the S. T. A. L. K. E. R. series of video games- they were based on the movie of the same name, which was in turn based on the novel Roadside Picnic (a good book, by the way), both done by the Strugatsky brothers in the '70's. The games were good, but after the third, the developer, GSC Game World, shut down; there would be no more games. A few years later, however, another announcement was made by an unrelated party, announcing a new S. T. A. L. K. E. R. game. Sergey Grygorovych, head of GSC, responded publicly, saying, essentially "Um, what? I didn't sign off on this", and the announcer declared that it wasn't based on GSC's games, but on the book and movie.

This was a problem, because as their name and the year suggests, the Strugatskys weren't just Russian, but SOVIET- their work was the intellectual property of the USSR, which of course by this point no longer existed. So who owned it now?

RavVid · Accepted Answer

It s interesting. I suspect yes because it will be a tool that a person or organization used in creation.

A picture would be easiest to say yes the person or organization has copy right using an AI Tool. It s hard to draw a line between using Photo Shop and more traditional artwork and then hard to draw a line between Photo Shop and AI.

So I think clearly copyright to the creator of the pic.

A bit harder in terms of writing stories, creating movies and songs as the same analogy does not currently exist. It is hard to say pics can be copyrighted but AI generated stories, moves and songs can't be. So I think copyright has to follow for these works of art too.

Where it might be interesting is if AI clones particular actors in generating a new movie and told to use actor A and B. We can't copy right ourselves but potentially AI could generate a pretty good facsimile of actor A and B. Then take copyright action against Actor A and B. Don't see that would work but hey.

jennifer_bloom · Accepted Answer

I believe in all countries, you cannot copyright transferable and multi purpose terms that would poise reasonable interference with daily logic and common communication. So you can’t patent words like “water,” or “if” or “because.” Because that would systematically persecute those who try to express their thoughts in typical terms.

DishLady · Accepted Answer

If it's strictly AI generated then no. If your creative input went into the craft or adjustment of the work, then yes because of standard IP regulations.

genericname85 · Answer

i'm not a lawyer so I don't know. but i think it should be because ai works much like a real human. taken what they've seen, add some imagination and create something new. and much like you manipulate the buttons and dials let's say in photoshop, you can manipulate the ai with words to make a result that you wanted. so there's even still human work in it.

it's not like you can just easily say what you wanna see and the ai will make exactly what you had in mind. there's a big skill curve to learning how to get the ai to make what you actually invisioned.

jshm2 · Answer

The problem is that AI doesn't produce any original work. So whatever sources are used take precedence over it's viability to be copyright.

Hence why AI is more a tool and not the actual finished product.

RebelinSteel · Answer

No you cannot copyright the AI artwork outputted from your input wording. you can copyright the wording used to produce the artwork. Ai Art fails the human authorship rulings.

abc3643 · Answer

I suspect that it can be copywritten likely by the person who owns the AI, issued the prompt, or paid for the result.

OlderAndWiser · Answer

The person who creates the AI bot should be able to claim a copyright for any original work produced by the bot.

exitseven · Answer

Who benefits from it? The person that owns the AI device? That person should be able to copyright the work.

chrissykerdock · Answer

they have a1;s commenting questions on gag i dont know what to think of them

purplepoppy · Answer

I suppose the company that owns the ai owns the copyright unless the ai nicks stuff off the Internet

AngryCarl · Answer

If it's possible then I assume copyright would revert to whoever owns the AI, it would be their intellectual property, not the end user's.

LiamS95 · Answer

Possibly if it's considered intellectual property.

KrakenAttackin · Answer

As AI is created by people I don't see any reason why it couldn't be copyrighted.

Alex-Snow · Answer

No clue I never thought of that...

Can the work of AI be COPYRIGHTED?

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