JESUS DIAZ, Fast Company; Copyright Office: Sorry, but you probably can’t protect your AI-generated art
"Well, there’s nothing to see here, folks. You don’t need any of the generative AI tools in our weekly roundup because they will produce stuff you don’t really own. At least that’s what the United States Copyright Office (USCO) says. The federal agency doubled down on its AI doctrine during a recent webinar, labeling anything produced by AI as “unclaimable material.”
In other words, anything that comes out of an AI program can’t be protected under copyright law and will not be accepted even if it’s included in a work created by a human. So those extra trees and mountains you added to your landscape photo with Photoshop Firefly beta? They are not yours, sorry.”
Robert Kasunic of the USCO says, “The Office will refuse to register works entirely generated by AI. Human authorship is a precondition to copyrightability.” But it’s more complicated than that. As Petapixel reports, USCO will register your images if they are modified with AI, but you will have to declare which parts are made using AI, making them “unclaimable, essentially discounting them” from the copyright protection. Kasunic went on to say that USCO believes that using any AI to generate content is akin to giving instructions to a commissioned artist.
How will USCO enforce this policy in a world where generative AI work is practically undetectable? It’s a question that only has one obvious answer: LOL."
