AI-created comic deemed ineligible for copyright protection

The United States Copyright Office (USCO) reversed an earlier decision to grant copyright to a comic book that was created using “A.I. art,” and announced that the copyright protection on the comic book will be revoked, stating that copyrighted works must be created by humans to gain official copyright protection.

In September, Kris Kashtanova announced that they had received a U.S. copyright on his comic book, Zarya of the Dawn, a comic book inspired by their late grandmother that she created with the text-to-image engine Midjourney. Kashtanova referred to herself as a “prompt engineer” and explained at the time that she went to get the copyright so that she could “make a case that we do own copyright when we make something using AI.”

“AI art” is artwork created by an artificial intelligence machine learning process, meaning that a computer/machine has learned information, such as the past work and art style of other artists, and descriptions of characters and images, and then generated a new image using that learned knowledge.

“AI art” is artwork created by an artificial intelligence machine learning process, meaning that a computer/machine has learned information, such as the past work and art style of other artists, and descriptions of characters and images, and then generated a new image using that learned knowledge. The knowledge fed into the machine is almost always from humans, who also often feed into the machine-specific guiding instructions for the creation of the art, but the actual final creation is generated by the computer/machine (in this instance, it would be Midjourney).

The USCO had previously denied giving copyright protection to A.I.-produced art, including earlier in 2022 when it denied protection to Stephen Thaler and his AI-generated painting, “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” Thaler then sued the Copyright Office, so the Office granting protection to Zarya of the Dawn was naturally a surprising turn of events.

However, in a post on her Facebook page. Kashtanova revealed that the USCO had contacted her to tell her that it was revoking the protection, explaining that it had errantly missed that Midjourney had created the art for the comic (despite Midjourney being listed on the credits of the cover of the comic). The USCO has given Kashtanova 30 days to appeal its decision.

Kashtanova pointed out at the time that they were “open to how it was made and put Midjourney on the cover page,” but the actual application doesn’t specify the role of Midjourney in the creation of the comic, only noting that the comic was “A.I.-assisted.”

Source: AI Business