Thaler told the D.C. Circuit that the ruling threatened to “discourage investment and labor in a critically new and important developing field.”
One can hope.
You know what else would discourage investment and labor in this field? Going after OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta for mass automated copyright infringement and bankrupting them.
Of course, I’ll win the Nobel prize for literature first.
an interesting stance to take i think! legally speaking they agree with Thaler’s claim that DABUS is in fact capable of producing art independent of human input. weird.
i feel like the article really breezes past the part about how the inventor thinks his AI is sentient! he seems like an interesting guy.
i think it’s a shame that this is being used presumably as precedent-setting for generative AI in general, since what DABUS has going on is very different from midjourney etc in material ways that i think should matter :/
Well yeah, it can? AI models can certainly create works that have “a modicum of creativity” (the legal standard under copyright law for a work to be considered original) without human intervention.
The issue here is that the right of copyright can only be vested in humans because human authorship is a foundational principle of copyright. His entire case was baloney because he did nothing to challenge this precedent (other than claim that it was unconstitutional).
For a fun example of non-human authors making creative works, there’s the Wikipedia monkey selfies:
hmm, i guess the idea i have of what “without human intervention” means is not what is meant legally?
to me, a human person making a program, making a bunch of art, putting that art into the program, fiddling around with the program, and then getting an image output is a process that has a lot of human intervention involved! and i consider it art made by a human person; i would reject this copyright claim because the AI is not responsible for the piece, not because the AI is responsible for the piece but is not eligible for copyright ownership due to being inhuman.
i think it’s notable that “the court not only refused to grant DABUS authorship but also didn’t allow Thaler to claim copyright of the image as DABUS’s creator” and treats DABUS as an entity rather than a tool!
Ah, sorry my reply was a bit unclear! Taken that broadly, of course there are human inputs into most things, but a designer of a camera doesn’t have any stake into the copyright of photographs taken by it, nor does an art teacher have any stake into the copyright of the works produced by their students. Copyright law is concerned with the act of authorship/creation—that’s why things like CCTV surveillance or animal trap cameras don’t (usually) have any credible claim to copyright.
That’s not to say there isn’t a threshold in the law in which you could find sufficient human authorship to a work generated by an AI model. But what Thaler is doing, where DABUS generates the works autonomously, is de minimis: there is practically no human control over the the model’s outputs. For that reason, it’s extremely similar to those monkey selfies.
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Just a disclaimer, everything I’ve said applies specifically to US copyright law (cf. the UK, where this would be a cut and dried case in favor of copyright protection for Thaler).
ahhhhh, i see i see! thank you for elaborating, that makes a lot more sense to me! i didn’t know that about CCTV/wildlife cams, that’s very interesting!
According to the Authors Guild website, a class action lawsuit is currently in the works for all affected authors!
(Meta's Massive AI Training Book Heist: What Authors Need to Know - The Authors Guild)
Class Action Lawsuits Cover All Writers Whose Books Were Used. This may apply for other creations as well. I’d reach out to them.
Legal action is already underway against Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and other AI companies for using pirated books. If your book was used by Meta, you’re automatically included in the Kadrey v. Meta class action in Northern California, without needing to take any immediate action. The court is first deciding whether Meta broke copyright laws, with a decision expected this summer, before officially certifying everyone as part of the class.
You don’t need to be a named plaintiff to benefit or receive damages if you qualify as part of the class. The Authors Guild is a plaintiff in the class action lawsuit, along with John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, David Baldacci, George R.R. Martin, and 13 other authors. The claims are made on behalf of all U.S. authors whose works have been ingested into GPT. You can [read more about that here](http://You Just Found Out Your Book Was Used to Train AI. Now What?).
The Authors Guild also recommends adding the following to your works:
• Protect your works by adding a “NO AI TRAINING” notice on the copyright page.
• For online work, update your website’s robots.txt file to block AI bots. The Authors Guild offers resources for creators; (Practical Tips for Authors to Protect Their Works from AI Use - The Authors Guild) to help shield your content from scrapers.
This movement has been gaining a lot of traction on social media lately, so it’s likely that many creators will join this class action lawsuit.
Last year, a few artists won a class action lawsuit after suing an AI company: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artists-vs-stability-ai-lawsuit-moves-ahead-2524849
https://venturebeat.com/ai/whats-next-for-artists-suing-stability-ai-and-midjourney/