alt Hacker NewsAI-generated art can't be copyrighted, fine. But what does this mean for the huge spectrum between "I did some fingerpainting" and "Nano Banana spat out this painting"?
What if I use Photoshop and context-aware fill a cloud in? Is that AI-generated or human-generated art?
Replies
most likely counts as AI-assisted art, which is copyrightable with you as the owner
like most things copyright there is a gray area there
but in most cases it's either pretty clear and courts would most likely rule in your (copyright holder) if you somehow manage to hit the perfect middle of the gray area
through if you tell the court "the author is my AI" (like in this case), the outcome is pretty obvious
also for better understanding using AI doesn't erase copyright, it just doesn't add it. So if you image was copyrightable before you used an AI tool to change it will stay copyrightable (as long as the original image is still in there to a reasonable degree).
I wonder if Nano Banana spits out an image and I copy it by hand into a different medium like acrylics, chalk, or charcoal. Does a manual transcription suddenly render the image worthy of copyright?
This also raises the meta question: how much does an image need to change to acquire a new copyright? For example, if you change the Last Supper to include two fat Jesuses on either side of the single skinny Jesus, is that enough?
They cover this. It has to have "substantial human authorship".
So if you start with something you truly made, it would be difficult to use so much context aware fill to negate that.
If you start with something AI generated,at what point does it become copywritable? This is less clear.
But that's fine, because the decision does not torpedo anyone's existing Photoshop workflows.