AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted, rules a US Federal Judge::United States District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell found that AI-generated artwork can’t be copyrighted, putting to rest a lawsuit against the US Copyright Office over its refusal to copyright an AI-generated image.
How does this work for using ai generated art as part of larger projects e.g. games development? Is the game still copy rightable? Are parts of it protected but others not?
The ai generated portion does not have copy right protection. This also applies within an image. So for instance in an ai generated building image with a human created character in front. People couldn’t copy the character but could use the background.
AI generated portions of things would have copyright per the article. Only wholly-AI-created content is non-copyrightable per this ruling.
How will the copyright office know what’s ai generated and what’s not
The title is a lie if you actually read the case. AI work can be copyrighted if there is enough human input into the work. This case was just about trying to get the AI to claim copyright (which it cannot do as it is not human) and transferring that right to the owner of the AI.
As for cases where the AI work is not under copyright then I believe it would be consider public domain? And thus we already have rules for how that works can be used as part of a greater works.
Also, is there even any need to tell people that parts aren’t copyrighted? That’d be pretty tedious to do (“texture on model pot_interior_clay_2_cracked is not copyrighted”). But if a game has a mix of copyrighted and non copyrighted media, that basically means nobody can use the non copyrighted parts because they simply can’t identify which parts those are.
I suspect there’s no need to tell people. After all, mixed media is already a thing. I can make a copyrighted video, for example, in which I quote some Shakespeare. The Shakespeare quote isn’t copyrighted, but the rest is. I’ve never seen any kind of copyright notice mention this.
So the net result might not be any different. Just if you steal assets from something, they might have a harder time identifying if they have a case of copyright infringement. Only if something was entirely AI generated would things likely change much. Though there’s also some weird edge cases. Like what if a human makes a 3D model but an AI textures it. 3D models are basically never used without their texture. So what’s the copyright implications of using videos of this textured model? Perhaps something for a very expensive legal case to figure out?
If the textures are not copyrightable then they are in the public domain are they not? If so the same rules apply to any public domain works and I believe you can use them however you want to in your own works.
Technically no. But law is all about interpretation and it can be easy enough to hide depending on what stage of the project it’s used.
TBH, this really only affects people who thought they could gut their entire writing team or artists and release content solely done by AI.
It’s unlikely to affect places that use it for things like mood boarding or other menial tasks.