AI artist Jason Allen submitted some Midjourney output, “Theatre D’Opera Spatial,” to the digital art category of the Colorado State Fair fine arts competition in 2022. He won, to some controversy.…
“All Allen could copyright was what he did to the image himself” - so if he trained the model himself, would that make the work copyrightable? Does that mean midjourney has the copyright of all the images created with it?
The image gatcha does not create a new copyright. There might be a copyright in the text of a complex prompt (do you feel lucky in court?) Mere “sweat of the brow” does not generate a new copyright in the US, so e.g. retouching work on a photo does not generate a new copyright and photos of a public domain artwork do not create a new copyright.
This doesn’t touch on the old copyrights of the stuff Midjourney trained on to make its computer-mediated collages. Those copyrights still exist.
Does the computer-mediated collage launder the previous copyrights? The answer is “do you feel lucky in court?”
So midjourney give it’s users ownership, as do all the other image generation services.
That being said, what you quoted means that if someone generates an image and then further modifies it, then they can copyright it. If all they did was prompt the model and nothing else, then it isn’t possible to copyright.
Cant stop thinking about the http://allthemusic.info/ project. Would be a crazy amount of data but making every possible image and make it public domain. Unoriginal therefore uncopyrightable.
“All Allen could copyright was what he did to the image himself” - so if he trained the model himself, would that make the work copyrightable? Does that mean midjourney has the copyright of all the images created with it?
I think if he “trained” the model on art he himself created you might have an argument.
The image gatcha does not create a new copyright. There might be a copyright in the text of a complex prompt (do you feel lucky in court?) Mere “sweat of the brow” does not generate a new copyright in the US, so e.g. retouching work on a photo does not generate a new copyright and photos of a public domain artwork do not create a new copyright.
This doesn’t touch on the old copyrights of the stuff Midjourney trained on to make its computer-mediated collages. Those copyrights still exist.
Does the computer-mediated collage launder the previous copyrights? The answer is “do you feel lucky in court?”
It’s Tornado Cash, but for pictures of Garfield with a machete.
North Korea: “AUGH MY EYES”
So midjourney give it’s users ownership, as do all the other image generation services.
That being said, what you quoted means that if someone generates an image and then further modifies it, then they can copyright it. If all they did was prompt the model and nothing else, then it isn’t possible to copyright.
Ah thanks for the clarification.
Cant stop thinking about the http://allthemusic.info/ project. Would be a crazy amount of data but making every possible image and make it public domain. Unoriginal therefore uncopyrightable.