"United States copyright law protects only works of human creation," observed a US district court last Friday, marking a decisive moment in a scientist's long-drawn struggle to claim copyright over the art generated by his AI system. While pointing out that US copyright law has always protected human authors (and not non-human ones like AI), Justice Beryl A. Howell acknowledged the need to better flesh out the complicated questions AI is posing to traditional copyright regimes. "Undoubtedly, we are approaching new frontiers in copyright as artists put AI in their toolbox to be used in the generation of new visual and other artistic works," Justice Howell observed in a Memorandum Opinion on August 18th, a copy of which was uploaded by the Hollywood Reporter. "The increased attenuation of human creativity from the actual generation of the final work will prompt challenging questions regarding how much human input is necessary to qualify the user of an AI system as an 'author' of a generated work, the scope of the protection obtained over the resultant image, how to assess the originality of AI-generated works where the systems may have been trained on unknown pre-existing works, how copyright might best be used to incentivize creative works involving AI, and more." About the case: The central question in scientist Stephen Thaler's petition was simple—can a person claim copyright over an AI-generated work? [caption id="attachment_183604" align="alignleft" width="310"] "A Recent Entrance to Paradise" | Source.[/caption] Remember, Thaler created the Creativity Machine AI, which produced a piece of…
