Day 6: Copyright and AI
Welcome to day 6! Today, we are exploring questions and issues involving AI generated art and content and copyright.
The emergence of AI has raised key copyright questions relating to the role of creativity and how it is recognised. Technology companies such as Microsoft and Google and AI platforms such as OpenAI, Stability AI and Midjourney face legal challenges from educators, artists, publishers and content creators over their AI model training practices.
One of the key legal questions has been:
When you train AI models on copyrighted works is such training classed as unlawful copying or is it protected under fair use/dealing exceptions?
Fair use is….
Dealing exceptions are…
Another challenge concerns the copyright status of AI-generated works themselves, which raises various questions.
- Can AI outputs be protected by copyright?
- What constitutes a ‘derivative’* work versus a new creation?
- Who owns the rights to AI-generated content?
*derivative work:
These challenges become more complex as different countries take different approaches.
- United States has rejected applications for AI-generated works maintaining that copyright protection requires substantial human creativity
- China has granted copyright protection to AI-generated content
- UK theoretically allows copyright for computer-generated works but ownership of this remains unclear.
We know these are big questions and considerations to explore. Choose a task to explore and reflect on how AI tools are being used. Activity 1 involves creating something and Task 2 involves reflecting on images already created.
Activity 1:
Login or create an account with an image generator such as Stable Diffusion. If you are new to using Stable Diffusion, a free account will provide you with 10 “credits” to create AI generations with.
You might want to consult Stable Diffusion’s FAQ if you have any questions.
Using prompts either
- Recreate a ‘famous artwork’ but change one major element e.g create the Mona Lisa but make her very sad
- Create an image/object/scene in the style of a famous artist e.g. create a picture of a library in the style of Warhol
Discussion and reflection on activity 1:
To qualify for copyright a work needs to be ‘original’, it doesn’t mean it needs to be ‘good’ (luckily for some of us). A recent case clarified the definition of ‘original’ in copyright to mean
“What is required is that the author was able to express their creative abilities in the production of the work by making free and creative choices so as to stamp the work created with their personal touch”.
Option A):
- Thinking about your prompt what elements of the original artwork remain?
- Do you think your new ‘artwork’ could be considered copyright infringement?
- Who could claim copyright ownership of this image?
Option B):
- What specific style elements has the AI reproduced?
- Could this image raise copyright concerns? Why? Why not?
- Who could claim copyright ownership of this image?
Activity 2:
Each of the following works were created using AI tools.
- The first won an award which was then withdrawn after it came to light that it was created using AI.
- The second image was granted copyright protection after someone else took the image and passed it off as their own.
- The third image was created by an AI Robot.
Theatre D’Opera Spatial – Jason Allen
Spring Breeze Brings Tenderness – Li
AI God – AI-Da
Discussion and reflection on Task 2:
- What are your thoughts about these images?
- Should any of these works be given copyright?
- Who is the creator/owner?
- Would you reuse these images?
- Should you be able to sell these images?
- What ‘reward’ should the creators of these images be given?
Further information:
You may want to learn more about copyright and AI:
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