The Ins and Outs of Image Use and Copyright on Midjourney
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What I'm not sure I get is how Midjourney can have different licenses for the output for paid and free users. That seems akin to Adobe retaining the rights to any images you create if you're using a free trial copy of their software.
If you commission an artist to create a work based on your requirements you do not own that copyright without some other agreement giving you that copyright.
But if the artist is not human it is not possible to copyright that image at all, even if you gave it a prompt to commission the work. This is the guidance released by the us copyright office in March
Works creates by non humans are public domain and cannot be copyrighted. Making changes to them only potentially gives you an ability to copyright your changes and does not affect the copyright status of the underlying work not created by a human
Well, in many cases, it would be a work for hire. Certainly as a practical matter you can do most things with the painting you want because you own it.
Prompt engineering seems like as much of a creative act as many things we routinely see copyrighted. I certainly wouldn't maintain that the output of Copilot or images processed with Adobe's various "AI" tools in Photoshop, Lightroom, and its new generative AI program lost their copyright protection because AI touched them.
Prompt engineering is changing your prompt that commissions the work but does not change the underlying lack of copyright due to non human artist. You're saying because you phrased your commission just right, the non humam artist now can copyright things and by all indications this is not true
Your contribution is just an extra careful way to phrase the request for commission and does not rise to the level of authorship or copyrightability.
You can do, as you say, whatever you want with the image but not because you own it, but because the image is public domain and anyone can do what they want with the image.
But with a work commissioned with a human artist by default you do not own the copyright and you cannot do what you want - you could sell your copy but you do not have the ability to license it to others, barring a specific agreement with the artist for that right.
Because copyright requires human authorship. You choosing to apply filters may rise to the level of being able to copyright those changes but will never affect the copyright status of the underlying image.
Getting an AI that cannot create copyrightable changes to make changes like in painting or out painting just creates another uncopyrightable public domain image because there are no human authors.
If you got an a neural network to choose and apply the previous transformations that too is not copyrightable. Copyright requires a human author.
If you make changes to a midjourney image your changes may rise to the level of copyrightable but it will never alter the copyright status of the underlying image.
So this article is seemingly just wrong. You don't need any license or paid membership to use am image not generated by a human - it is by default in the public domain.