What do you think of the ruling today that AI art can't be copyrighted?

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https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-appeals-court-rejects-copyrights-ai-generated-art-lacking-human-creator-2025-03-18/

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What do you think of the ruling today that AI art can't be copyrighted?

That's not what they ruled. They ruled that the AI itself can't hold a copyright -- which, given how current techniques work, seems like the correct judgement for now.

Works that use AI in their production can still be copyrighted, but that requires a human to be involved significantly in the creation of the work.

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OP

My understanding is that it's still (technically) correct. If you generate an image and then edit it yourself, only your edits will have copyright. Basically, you can have a copyright on the diff, but not the original

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The US Copyright Office made a report about copyrightability of AI works a while back: https://copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf

Based on an analysis of copyright law and policy, informed by the many thoughtful
comments in response to our NOI, the Office makes the following conclusions and
recommendations:

  • Questions of copyrightability and AI can be resolved pursuant to existing law,
    without the need for legislative change.
  • The use of AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect
    the availability of copyright protection for the output.
  • Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author,
    even if the work also includes AI-generated material.
  • Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there
    is insufficient human control over the expressive elements.
  • Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute
    authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
  • Based on the functioning of current generally available technology, prompts do not
    alone provide sufficient control.
  • Human authors are entitled to copyright in their works of authorship that are
    perceptible in AI-generated outputs, as well as the creative selection, coordination,
    or arrangement of material in the outputs, or creative modifications of the outputs.
  • The case has not been made for additional copyright or sui generis protection for AI-
    generated content.

The Office will continue to monitor technological and legal developments to determine
whether any of these conclusions should be revisited. It will also provide ongoing assistance to
the public, including through additional registration guidance and an update to the
Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices.

So, you can have copyright if you used an AI to assist in the production of a work -- not just on edits -- but case-by-case judgement is needed.

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US Copyright Office

But who knows what rules this could be changed to have to follow, potentially even mere days to weeks from now.

Nothing is certain anymore, in regards to the USA governmental functions.

(Edit: test edit, please ignore this.)

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I imagine that the copyright office is too boring when for Nazis to touch, but I've been wrong before.

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Sure, and if the Unhinged States of America decides to toss copyright completely overboard in its current thrashing, well, I won't be complaining. 🫠️

Until we hear otherwise though, I'll assume the findings of the Copyright Office are correct. They seem reasonable enough given current tech and the assumption that copyright does continue to exist.

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Makes sense to me. I can't just make a collage of randomly pasted copyrighted images and copyright the collage. Why should AI get to do the same thing just because it's not human?

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Pretty sure you can copyright the collage, but that's more transformative and contains not intent than any ai

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Good news: Generative AI doesn't do that, either.

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I view it as generally a good thing. I see copyright as an unnatural restriction on our rights. An explosion of AI art that can't be copyrighted means the default assumption will be that all art you see is libre. Approximately nobody will care about copyright in a few decades at most, and it will be de facto dead.

(Edited to move this to be a comment for easier discussion)

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