FlowVoid

After you've spun enough brushes or popped enough balloons, the results will be fairly predictable. And some elements, for example the color of paint in the brushes/balloons, would be under full control.

Even if the final result is not completely predictable, an artist only needs to establish that a significant part of it is a form of creative expression.

In a work for hire contract, the contract explicitly states that the employer gets the copyright.

You can think of the compensation as being partly from employment, and partly from the sale of any copyright.

You put as much effort into it as you would anything else.

Copyright is not meant to reward effort. This is a common misconception. Thirty years ago there was a landmark SCOTUS case about copyrighting a phone book. Back then, collecting and verifying phone numbers and addresses took a tremendous amount of effort. Somebody immediately copied the phone book, and the creators of the phone book argued that their effort should be rewarded with copyright protection.

The courts shot that down. Copyright is not about effort, it's about creative expression. Creative expression can require major effort (Sistine Chapel) or take very little effort (duck lips photo). Either way, it's rewarded with a copyright.

Assembling a database is not creative expression. Neither is judging whether an AI generated work is suitable. Nor pointing out what you'd like to see in a new AI generated work. So no matter how much effort one puts into those activities, they are not eligible for copyright.

To the extent that an artist takes an AI generated work and adds their own creative expression to it, they can claim copyright over the final result. But in all the cases in which AI generated works were ruled ineligible, the operator was simply providing prompts and/or approving the final result.

It's not actually called "theft" or "stealing", it's called "infringement" or "violation". Infringement is to intellectual property as trespassing is to real estate. The owners are still able to use their property, but their rights to it have nevertheless been violated.

Also, corporations cannot create intellectual property. They can only offer to buy it from the natural persons who created it. Without IP protection, creators would lose the only protections they have against corporations and other entrenched interests.

Imagine seeing all your family photos plastered on a McDonald's billboard, or in political ad for a candidate you despise. Imagine being told, "Sorry, you can't stop them from using your photos however they want". That's a world without IP protection.

You need direct control over some elements of a work to claim copyright. Not necessarily all of them.

So even if the microtexture is out of your control, you still have complete control of the framing, color, etc. That's sufficient to claim copyright.

If you lose control of every element by replacing them all with prompts and/or chance, then you lose the copyright. Which is what happened in the "monkey selfie" photo.

No, under copyright law it would be your work and your work alone.

Someone who is providing suggestions or prompts to you is not eligible to share the copyright, no matter how detailed they are. They must actually create part of the work themselves.

So for instance if you are in a recording studio then you will have the full copyright over music that you record. No matter how much advice or suggestions you get from other people in the studio with you. Your instruments/voice/lyrics, your copyright.

Otherwise copyright law would be a constant legal quagmire with those who gave you suggestions/prompts/feedback! Remember, an idea cannot be copyrighted, and prompts are ideas.

In the case of Stable Diffusion, the copyright would go to Stable Diffusion alone if it were a human. But Stable Diffusion is not a human, so there is no copyright at all.

And arguably, neither the image generator did. Who did were the artists

In which case, neither the image generator nor its operator are eligible for copyright.

The same reasoning still applies to Stable Diffusion etc., given that you can heavily tweak the output through your prompt.

The point is that the AI generator (or, if you prefer, its training data) exercised direct control over the image, not you. Providing additional prompts does not change this, just as rerolling the dice wouldn't make the dice the author.

For that matter, gives extensive prompts or other artistic direction to a human artist would not make you eligible for copyright, either. Even if the artist was heavily influenced by your suggestions.

Finally, choosing one among many completed works is not a creative process, even if it requires artistic judgment. Choosing repeatedly does not transform it into a creative process. That's why choosing your favorite song does not mean you are a song creator.

There are two separate issues here. First, can you copyright art that is completely AI-generated? The answer is no. So openAI cannot claim a copyright for its output, no matter how it was trained.

The other issue is if openAI violated a copyright. It's true that if you write a book in the style of another author, then you aren't violating copyright. And the same is true of openAI.

But that's not really what the openAI lawsuit alleges. The issue is not what it produces today, but how it was originally trained. The authors point out that in the process of training openAI, the developers illegally download their works. You can't illegally download copyrighted material, period. It doesn't matter what you do with it afterwards. And AI developers don't get a free pass.

Illegally downloading copyrighted books for pleasure reading is illegal. Illegally downloading copyrighted books for training an AI is equally illegal.

You can't copyright AI-generated art even if it was only trained with images in the public domain.

In fact, you can't copyright AI-generated art even it was only trained with images that you made.

In most experimental work, the artist does make a direct contribution to some key elements of the work, for example framing or background. Which is all that's necessary, you can still obtain copyright over something that is only partially under your control.

If an artist gives up all direct control over an experimental work - such as the infamous monkey selfie - then I think they should no longer be able to copyright it.

The output is still fully predictable by the artist.

The dice didn't make the eyes, after all. They just showed 21, now it's your job to actually make 21mm eyes. In doing so, you could mess up and/or intentionally make 22mm eyes. If someone asks, "Why are these eyes 21mm?", you can answer "I decided to do what the dice asked".

The dice are more like a client who asks you to draw a portrait with 21mm eyes. In other words, they are giving you a prompt. Nobody but you knows if they will get what they asked for.

So if someone asks you to paint something and gives you detailed instructions about what they want to see in your painting, do you think they should have copyright over your work?