>


DALLE is similar to a camera made by Kodak

In the same way that a car made by ferrari is similar to some gas I burped out

the camera is the one which is generating the image

A camera doesn't generate an image. It doesn't project a landscape out from the lens, it takes it in via the lens.
Do you genuinely believe a camera "generates" a photograph? What do you think "generates" means?
Don't you think a better analogy would be a commission?
If I want a portrait painted of my partner for her birthday I can reach out to an artist and commission them. I give them a prompt "please paint a canvas of this woman, interpret her as a renaissance queen" I supply a reference photograph and the painter does their painting.
I pay them for their work and they ship me the product.
I own the painting.
The painter stills owns the copyright to that painting.
Even though I prompted the painter my involvement ended there.
It's possible even to credit the photographer that supplied the reference image in the first place, but they wouldn't own copyright to the painting unless it was too artistically similar to the photo. Because it was reinterpreted into renaissance that's a slim chance. >

I always assumed it was the commissioner who owned the copyright, like if I have a idea for a character in my head but suck at drawing so I just gave a description for someone to draw for me, wouldn’t I own the copyright to the character I made up?
Or using your analogy if I commissioned a portrait of my partner, I wouldn’t want the painter making copies of her portrait to sell on the open market. >


The condition of them using the reference image was to produce a single work, they would be in breach of contract if they violated this.

I’m confused, if I control whether or not the work can be replicated, I essentially own it’s copyright (the right to copy) no?
I always wanted a family portrait on canvass if I could one day afford to have one made, but never did I even consider that I had to stipulate in a contract that the painter could only make the one artwork, so anyone who didn’t have it in a contract could find the artist selling copies of their family portrait on the public market?
That’s scary, I kind of not want to commission any art now, whether it’s my personal ideas or the people I care about, potentially losing control of my ideas and privacy because I’m not adept in copyright law, seems too high a price. >


I’m confused, if I control whether or not the work can be replicated, I essentially own it’s copyright (the right to copy) no?

If you have a contract which states please produce one painting from this reference and they produce two (or more, or even one and a half) they have violated the contracted.
But the painter still owns the copyright, so if your painting rips and you send it to a different painter and ask them to make a fresh copy they would be in breach of the first painters copyright. You send it to the original to remake.
There is always a contract when you commission something, and most artists aren't out there selling portraits of other people's families. Your fear is unfounded. >

That's not correct. A new painting is a new painting. The new artist implicitly owns that new copyright. 
The copyright can also transfer if the artist signs it away. >


A new painting is a new painting.

Go paint Mickey Mouse and see how that works out for you.

The copyright can also transfer if the artist signs it away.

That's a contract. >

These are some good resources and I will look into them now. In terms of the mickey mouse thing, if the output has elements of something that is protected, then that is infringing and Disney can sue. I am talking about cases where the output does not have direct elements of copying >

...but that's the argument isn't it? The data the AI was trained on consisted of copyrighted elements. So is it more akin to an artist taking copyrighted images and putting together a collage for their own copyright, or is it entirely new?
It's certainly nuanced. I think ultimately judges will rule that anything made via an AI that had copyrighted data in its training will result in the output not being eligible for copyright. >

Intuitively I would argue that is entirely new as opposed to a collage. That is an interesting position in your last sentence. So it would be public domain then? Couple questions in that scenario: 


How would they prove whether there was copyrighted data in the training? Some people might not know what a model that comes to them has been trained on in the past. 


What would you say to the argument about influence? If I listen to George Carlin's stand up 5000 times and then create a stand up set of my own which is clearly influenced by his work but draws no direct copying, should I be able to copyright my set? >


The only choice left is the user

You forgot one option.
Public domain.
The idea that all of culture should be divied up and turned into sellable assets is a very recent one. A century ago, most cultural items were not owned, they were just there.
Corporations have continuously and relentlessly expanded copyright to secure more profit, but we don't have to follow them. >

Good point I did forget public domain. But why is that better? Why shouldn't the prompter be allowed to protect their work? 
Do you have a link to your claim about most cultural assets? What do you mean by cultural assets? Copyright protection is in the constitution >

If you do something with the image, that might be protected. After all, you can copyright a work that includes public domain stuff.
To take your camera analogy. You can copyright a photograph of a lake, but you can not copyright the idea of taking a picture of that lake with that type of camera.
This is complicated a bit  by perfect reproduction of the AI, but I think it's silly to argue that the first person to enter a specific command owns that output and all similar output, even if someone else independently enters something similar.
Imagine a patent troll just datamining and snapping stuff up.

Copyright protection is in the constitution

Old copyright was much shorter and more limited than today. >

Consider a few things:


If I say to an AI "make me a picture of a tulip that is exactly the same as the picture of the tulip created by fred" you're now suggesting that the person who says that should have copyright instead of fred?  The point here is that it's not enough to simply issue the command to grant copyright.  Don't you think that when someone uses AI to create something it could be doing so in a way that violates copyright rather than infers upon them the copyright?  This is important because this would be impossible with a camera - it can't take the same picture twice and it can't create identical thing to another thing.  


To add to this you can imagine the AI actually being slimy and responding to something like "make a picture of a house" but actually delivering a copy of a digital picture of a house.  In this case wouldn't the AI be responsible for the copyright violation since it has cheated the propter?  Or at least the programmer would be because it was part of the deception that allowed the AI to deliver what was thought by the asker to be an "original" but was in reality a copy.  Would you hold the asker responsible for the copyright violation?  Or the programmer.  Are you really comfortable blaming the programmer or the AI for willfully creating a copyright violation but then not crediting it for original work?  Something seems wrong in there to me.  At the very least, your lens seems crude to me (as do almost all things I've read about this topic as we're in the figure-it-out-phase for sure!).


I think certainly this can be handled via contract.  E.G. if I make an AI and then allow you to use it via contract or EULA and retain ownership, shouldn't that at least answer the debate? >

The difficulty is with use of stock images. These are images provided for doing photomontage with the expectation that the images will be purchased. AI is doing the same things as a human artist but not paying for use of the source images. >

So a company with sufficient computing power could start generating and storing trillions of random images and they would own the copyright to all of them? >

This is a great point. Isnt this kind of what google does with google earth? pretty sure they just hired a fleet of cars to drive around for like 15 years taking a photo every second and they own the copyright to all of them, right? >

Only that specific picture, not if someone else take the same picture. Which in AI art means you will only own that image file but others can create the same with the same prompt. >

Yes I think thats true, others should be able to get same image with same prompt. But I don't think they will. If I enter "horse on golf cart" into DALL-E and hit generate 100 times, I don't think I will ever get the same output twice. >

There are usually a temperature settings which introduce randomness. Are you arguing for that the prompter should get copyright because of the random number generated a good picture? >

Yes in the same way that there are settings on a camera that can be adjusted by the user, and the user owns the copyright of the camera's output (when pointed and shot by the user), I think that the user should own the copyright of works generated by the AI (prompted and executed by the user), even if some of that AI's settings employ random numbers under the hood. 
I don't think the nature of how the settings work matter too much, they are still settings that the user can adjust just like aperture and ISO on a camera. >

Sorry for irritating argument but if the random number is generated by dalle why would you get the copyright and not dalle? >

My argument is this: DALLE is similar to a camera made by Kodak. It is a tool. Sure the camera is the one which is generating the image. It has mirrors and shutters and lights and sensors. But I bought the camera and I own the photo that is produced when I use the tool. 
In the same way, when I pay DALLE for their service (like buying the camera from Kodak), I should own the outputs of the tool. How it works under the hood doesnt matter.