In the context of AI, the issue is specifically with using a copyrighted image and creating something new based off of that. That is explicitly illegal for human artists.
But where do you draw the line? If AI imagines 3 people around a business table in front of a flip chart, is that copyright infringement on similar stock photos? Note that in the AI created image, the people are unique, they never existed, the business table is unique, the flip chart is unique, and in general you can't point to any existing photo it was trained over and say "it just copied this item here".
If so, why isn't it also copyright infringement when a human photographer stages another similar shot?
If I ask an AI for a picture, there is no artist 'bob' to be assigned ownership under copyright law and therefor it's not copyrightable under existing law.
Funny how originally all these pro-AI art people were anti-copyright law but I can see them sometime soon lobbying for MORE restrictive copyright law (granting it in a larger pool or circumstances hence making more things copyrighted) so that they can overcome this.
Well that's sort of the whole thing with copyright law. It's fairly arbitrary. Copyright specifically forbids derivative works: "A derivative work is a work based on or derived from one or more already exist- ing works."
It's vague on purpose because copyright infringements generally need to be handled on a case by case basis.
Now there are AI's trained on images that are copyrighted. If the image is copyrighted, should the AI have been allowed to train on it?
The reason human training/inspiration isn't specifically forbidden is because it can't be. We are impressioned by things whether we like it or not. Regardless, we can't prove where someone's inspiration came from.
But the act of training an AI on copyrighted images is deliberate. I feel that's a key difference.
And there's plenty of cases that say if you're too inspired, that's illegal and/or you own damagaes/royalties.
https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/case-study/blurred-lines-...
> For example: if they base their painting on an oft photographed or painted location, generic subject matter, or an image that has been taken by numerous photographers they would likely not be violating copyright law.
> However: if they create their painting, illustration or other work of art from a specific photograph or if your photography is known for a particular unique style, and their images are readily identifiable with you as the photographer, and an artist copies one of your photographic compositions or incorporates your photographic style into their painting or illustration they may be liable for copyright infringement.
https://www.thelawtog.com/blogs/news/what-do-i-do-if-someone...
Because AI rarely recreates images 1:1 it is unlikely the violate any copyrights.
Seems pretty cut and paste to me. If it has trained on my images and then uses that trained dataset to generate new images those images are in violation. Using training sets that include unlicensed copyrighted works requires attribution and licensing. TO be legal otherwise the end user/AI company would have to be able to prove in a court of law that without training on my copyrighted work it would have still generated that specific image which I can't see the users/company being able to do.
Is there a rulingn for this? This would be similar as using a school book requires attribution and licensing for your education.
Taking copyrighted images and dumping them into a machine learning model is deliberate usage. The AI isn't a person, so it doesn't draw on past experience by happenstance.
Making the two processes equivalent is very reductive.