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stale2002

The answer would be if the weights are transformative enough, and the copyright would come from the person who decided what images to include in the training set.

The act of choosing to place images in a certain arrangement, such as a collage, can be copyrightable. The same could be said for the "act" of choosing what images to include in a training set and which parameters to use to train the model.

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Does that mean if someone copies a phone book but leaves out some numbers and adds some other numbers then it's a creative work?

The legal system is not like a computer program. The line between what is "creative" and what is not concrete, but is instead up to the interpretation of the judge who rules on it.

So your phonebook modifications may or may not be considered "creative" depending on the judge and your ability to convince them. The more your modify it, the more likely you are to convince a judge it is a creative work, though.

It would depend on how transformative the work is.

There is in fact a whole art form where people cut out words from different newspapers and books, for example, and re-arrange those words to form new and interesting art.

So there are ways in which such a work would be a creative work, and ways it which it would not, and it would depend on the particular instance and example.

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