velyn Waugh famously held that taking a keen interest in ecclesiastical matters was often “a prelude to insanity”. Much the same might be said about newspaper columnists taking an interest in intellectual property law. But let us take the risk. After all, you only live once – at least until Elon Musk creates an electronic clone of himself.to copyright an artwork that had been created by an AI. The work in question is, to the untrained eye at least, no great shakes.
In 2018, Stephen Thaler, CEO of a neural network firm called Imagination Engines, had listed Creativity Machine as the sole creator of the artwork. The US Register of Copyrighton the grounds that “the nexus between the human mind and creative expression” is a crucial element of protection. Mr Thaler was not amused and issued a lawsuit contesting the decision, arguing that: AI should be acknowledged “as an author where it otherwise meets authorship criteria”; that ownership of copyright should then be vested in the machine’s owner ; and that the register’s decision should be subjected to judicial review to clarify “whether a work generated solely by a computer falls under the protection of copyright law”.that the register had not erred in denying Thaler’s application for copyright.
to extend copyright protection to photography in a case involving a photograph of Oscar Wilde, no less! This is interesting because in 1884 – and indeed until comparatively recently – cameras were essentially dumb, analogue machines. You pointed them at a scene, decided on the required exposure , set the shutter speed and aperture and pressed a button. The image produced by this process was chemically etched on to a glass plate or a strip of celluloid.
Still, at the moment it meets the “human involvement” criterion of the 1884 judgment and of contemporary copyright legislation. But my hunch is that its days are numbered. Indeed, even Judge Howell seems to agree. “We are approaching new frontiers in copyright,” she writes, “as artists put AI in their toolbox to be used in the generation of new visual and other artistic works.