Plaintiff Stephen Thaler had appealed after lower courts upheld a U.S. Copyright Office decision that the AI-crafted visual ⁠art ‌was ineligible for copyright.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday ⁠to take up the issue of whether art generated by artificial intelligence can be copyrighted under U.S. law, turning away ​a case involving a computer ​scientist from Missouri who was ​denied a copyright for a piece of visual art made by his AI system.

Plaintiff Stephen Thaler had appealed to the justices after lower courts upheld a U.S. Copyright Office decision that the AI-crafted visual ⁠art ‌at issue in the case was ineligible for copyright protection ⁠because it did not have a human creator.

Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a federal copyright registration in 2018 covering “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” visual art he said his AI technology “DABUS” created. The image shows train tracks entering ‌a portal, surrounded by what appears to be green and purple plant imagery.

The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors ​to be eligible to receive a copyright. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration had urged the Supreme Court not to hear Thaler’s appeal.

  • dan@upvote.auEnglish
    4·
    1 day ago

    What if the drafts were created using AI too?

    Code is often in a source control system of some sort, which tracks changes to the code (who changed it, when it was changed, and a description of what was changed). It’s similar to having a lot of drafts.

    I don’t think that could prove that a human wrote it, though.

    I think in cases like this, the author could prove they created the code/story/art/whatever by having a deep understanding of the material. That’s how Michael Jackson defended against lawsuits saying he copied someone else’s song - he described his songwriting process and could hum/beatbox every instrument in the track.

      • tabular@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        22 hours ago

        If the training data for “drafts” and “hand written notes” exists then one can train an AI on it, and generate it the same way. Do some artists share such things?

        • ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          22 hours ago

          Idk what you’re talking about. How’s an AI going to fake handwritten? Not handwriting, handwritten. An AI can’t write in graphite and ink.

          • tabular@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            14 hours ago

            I’m not an artist, I just write silly game systems. I took for granted that a handwritting machine was an easy assumption. I doubt AI companies even have the insentive to try and create physical handwriting/sketching but I see no reason to believe it’s impossible.

            Here appears to be a handwriting printer “holding” a pen. People can probably tell this was not human written but I just imagine a machine that can replicate human hand motion better - like a robot hand on a robot arm.