Image: Kris Kashtanova
The US Copyright Office rejected an AI-generated work last February, citing a premise of human authorship. That hasn’t stopped AI enthusiasts from legitimizing the glorified art theft. Last year, a creator attempted To a comic book using images generated in the AI tool Midjourney. Yesterday, this creator finally received an official decision regarding a possible copyright. The comic would receive protection for the text and arrangements, both of which were produced by a human. However, the images generated by AI software would not be copyrighted.
Still, the creator, Kris Kashtanova, tries to portray it as a win for the AI community. Kashtanova tweeted this Zarya of the Dawn its copyright was “confirmed”, although this was not entirely the case.
According to the Copyright Office’s letter, Kashtanova originally did not disclose their use of the Midjourney software when they applied for copyright registration last year. The new partial copyright is intended to replace the old one, which covered the entirety of the work. The letter states that the new decision is a “more restricted” version. So the decision is indeed a major blow to AI advocates who had hoped their work would be protected by US copyright law.
Kashtanova told Kotaku that they never intended to “monetize” the comic, but wanted to know the legal status of AI works in the US Legal recognition of midjourney-generated images.
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“My lawyers and I are discussing an appeal,” Kashtanova Kotaku said via Twitter DMs. “I’d like to spend a few days thinking about it because it’s been an emotional journey. I was often harassed online for using AI tools and being in the news so much.”
Please do not harass anyone over the internet. But monetization is the primary goal of copyright protection. Hobbyists don’t need copyright to play around with the technology, and I would be very skeptical of anyone who claims they need to anchor their AI creations in the eyes of US law. Even when artists come together to create collaborative works, they still retain the rights to their work — unless they give up their copyright to collect a paycheck. Instead of worrying about their own legal rights, AI creators should care more about the artists whose work they exploit.