On Tuesday, the US Copyright Office declared that images created using the AI-powered Midjourney image generator for the comic book Zarya of the Dawn should not have been granted copyright protection, and the images' copyright protection will be revoked.

In a letter addressed to the attorney of author Kris Kashtanova obtained by Ars Technica, the office cites "incomplete information" in the original copyright registration as the reason it plans to cancel the original registration and issue a new one excluding protection for the AI-generated images. Instead, the new registration will cover only the text of the work and the arrangement of images and text. Originally, Kashtanova did not disclose that the images were created by an AI model. //

Based on the record before it, the Office concludes that the images generated by Midjourney contained within the Work are not original works of authorship protected by copyright. See COMPENDIUM (THIRD ) § 313.2 (explaining that “the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author”). Though she claims to have “guided” the structure and content of each image, the process described in the Kashtanova Letter makes clear that it was Midjourney—not Kashtanova—that originated the “traditional elements of authorship” in the images. //

Despite precedents for earlier algorithmically generated artwork receiving copyright protection, this ruling means that AI-generated imagery, without human-authored elements, cannot currently be copyrighted in the United States. The Copyright Office's ruling on the matter will likely hold unless it's challenged in court, revised by law, or re-examined in the future.

https://twitter.com/Dorialexander/status/1566489664961347589?s=20&t=C-1gw5GAR6GWccj9h9z_Fg //

IncorrigibleTroll Ars Praefectus
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Somebody should let ChatGPT know. I was asking it about copyright recently, and it was quite insistent that it is a mere tool and copyright of its output would be automatically assigned to the operator. I asked it if this was its conjectured interpretation or settled case law, and it got offended that I might doubt it.