AI-Created Comic Has Been Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection; CBR, December 20, 2022

BRIAN CRONIN, CBR; AI-Created Comic Has Been Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection

"The United States Copyright Office (USCO) reversed an earlier decision to grant a copyright to a comic book that was created using "A.I. art," and announced that the copyright protection on the comic book will be revoked, stating that copyrighted works must be created by humans to gain official copyright protection. 

In September, Kris Kashtanova announced that they had received a U.S. copyright on his comic book, Zarya of the Dawn, a comic book inspired by their late grandmother that she created with the text-to-image engine Midjourney. Kashtanova referred to herself as a "prompt engineer" and explained at the time that she went to get the copyright so that she could “make a case that we do own copyright when we make something using AI.”"

‘Wild West’ of Generative AI Poses Novel Copyright Questions; Bloomberg Law, November 18, 2022

 Riddhi Setty and Isaiah Poritz , Bloomberg Law; ‘Wild West’ of Generative AI Poses Novel Copyright Questions 

"Artist Kris Kashtanova became the first person to register a copyright for an artificial intelligence-assisted work in September, for an 18-page comic book called “Zarya of the Dawn” that was created with the AI art program Midjourney.

In recent weeks, however, Kashtanova said the Copyright Office wants to revoke the registration because it had overlooked the use of AI in the creation of the comic.

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence applications has left the burgeoning industry reckoning with how the powerful new technology interacts with copyright laws that govern everything from source code to art prints. The legal landscape is far from clear, with both the creators of AI tools and the artists who use them confronting copyright questions that haven’t yet been answered.

“It’s like the wild west right now,” said Ryan Abbott, an attorney at Brown Neri Smith & Khan LLP.

In what appears to be the first copyright infringement suit against the creator of an AI program, research company OpenAI Inc.—which has created a number of AI programs including generative art program DALL-E—was hit with a class action earlier this month by two software developers who said another OpenAI program called Copilot unlawfully duplicates their code without the proper license or attribution."