The US Copyright Office issued new guidance on Wednesday to clarify when artistic works created with the help of artificial intelligence are copyright eligible.
"The answer will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work," the office said.Generative AI systems like Midjourney, ChatGPT and DALL-E, which create text and images in response to human instructions, have recently skyrocketed in popularity. Microsoft-backed OpenAI on Tuesday released GPT-4, an upgraded version of ChatGPT.
The office reiterated Wednesday that copyright protection depends on the amount of human creativity involved, and that the most popular AI systems likely do not create copyrightable work. Creative modifications and arrangements of AI-created work, like Kashtanova's comic, can still be copyrighted, and the office said its policy"does not mean that technological tools cannot be part of the creative process."