AI news has been everywhere lately, almost spreading like wildfire as major innovations such as ‘ChatGPT’ and ‘DALL-E 2’ start to become mainstream and widely accessible. It is however not all completely sunshine and roses as there is an underlying issue regarding copyright, that could have the ability to taint its reputation. There is an ongoing debate about artist’s rights and AI generated artwork.
Should an artist/user have the rights to work generated by an AI from their prompts or should it be the company that owns the AI? More importantly once it has been determined who should own the rights, how would a solution model look like? Additionally, there has been legal complications based on content generated by AI. Several artists and other companies have alleged the illegal use of their content to actually train the AI. It begs the question, should these claims be compensated for if found to be true?
Figure 1: Example of artwork generated by an AI (Source: Pixabay)
Animals and AI
Currently copyright laws and regulations only apply to humans, meaning an animal or an AI cannot be protected by these sets of rules and regulations. A well known example of this is the case of Naruto v Slater (commonly known as the “monkey selfie copyright dispute”). The case was based around PETA acting on behalf of the macaque monkeys by suing him over use of images ‘taken’ by the monkeys, who took control of camera equipment setup by David Slater (photographer). Ultimately, the courts ruled in Slater’s favour and affirmed that animals do not have legal standing to own copyright or sue for infringement. This same precedent and logic is easily applied to an AI ‘author’ who would face the same legal issues. To put it succinctly, neither a monkey nor an AI chatbot can own a copyright.
Who Owns the Copyright?
Therefore the question remains: if an AI is used to generate content, who really owns it? The answer is largely ambiguous, as it really is no one at the moment. One could describe it as a legal grey area. Given there is no framework in place to solve this type of dispute one solution could be a licensing arrangement. Whereby the company who owns the AI distributes a subscription or license to the artist/user in exchange for the legal right to own the content that is generated from their prompts.
A Possible Solution
To those with concerns that this could restrict the widely accessible use of AI (which is the main beauty of these bots), companies could still offer the same services for free but without a license any content generated by the AI would be owned by the company. This is a pretty common pre-existing arrangement for various companies who allow general free access to their products but charge for enterprise and small business users who make money off of it.
A notable example of this freemium-style type of model is Fusion 360 who charge nothing for personal use, small businesses and a wide variety of conditions but charge $685 AUD annually for those who do not meet the criteria. You may be asking yourself, that’s great and all but how can you keep track of so many potential transactions and avoid fraudulent behaviour? The answer is blockchain.
I know what you’re thinking, you hear the word blockchain and associate it with the craziness of NFTs. It is hard not too especially when the two seems to be so interlinked. The reality is they are different and the actual value lies in the blockchain technology . With the ability to track each and every transaction safely, it largely eliminates the risk of using a subscription/license-based model on such a large scale.
Final Thoughts
Lastly, there has been some recent controversy surrounding the creation of the AI large language models (LLM). Artists, authors and companies have accused AI companies of using their copyrighted work without permission and compensation. A significant example of this is ‘Getty Images’ currently suing ‘Stability AI’ (creators of the ‘Stable Diffusion’ AI art generator) for the illegal use of millions of their images, with the ‘Getty Images’ watermark even appearing in AI-generated images.
The illegal use of another’s work is wrong and in my opinion the artists/original creators should be compensated. What do you think? Ultimately, that matter is up to the courts and these types of cases will play a large part in determining how future cases will play out.
Recently the US and EU announced plans to develop AI standards. This is more of a statement of intent rather than anything concrete, but it is a big step in the right direction for an industry where authorship should not remain indeterminate.
For more information checkout our article on ChatGPT Privacy Concerns and interact with us on our Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
