The U.S. Copyright Office just published a very interesting report entitled Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 2: Copyrightability. That report states that: "In the Office’s view, the case has not been made for additional protection for AI-generated material beyond that provided by existing law. As an initial matter, because
copyright requires human authorship, copyright law cannot be the basis of protection for works that do not satisfy that requirement." More specifically, the report contains these important conclusions:
"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."
According to a news article, "The USCO received more than 10,000 comments about the issue, the vast majority of which said that existing copyright laws were adequate to be applied purely to AI outputs." If you would like to review the Part 1 Report from the U.S. Copyright office about Digital Replicas, click here.