USPTO Questions if Artificial Intelligence Can Create or Infringe Copyrighted Works
The USPTO is part of the US Department of Commerce and deals with various intellectual property rights issues. It previously raised questions on how AI technology impacts patent law and is now expanding this to copyright matters.
The consultation starts off by asking whether anything created by an AI, without human involvement, can be copyrighted. This can refer to any type of content, including music, images, and texts.
"Should a work produced by an AI algorithm or process, without the involvement of a natural person contributing expression to the resulting work, qualify as a work of authorship protectable under U.S. copyright law? Why or why not?" the Office asks.
The technology and code that makes any AI work obviously relies on human interaction, but USPTO's question is destined to raise a lively debate. Since it's expected that more and more creations will rely heavily on AI in the future, the US Government requests guidance on these issues.
In a follow-up question, the Office zooms in further still by asking what kind of human involvement is required to make something copyrightable. Yet another question deals with possible copyright infringements by an AI. Or in other words, can an AI pirate?
The comment period closes on Dec. 16.
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The UK's Intellectual Property Office has decided artificial-intelligence systems cannot patent inventions for the time being:
A recent IPO consultation found many experts doubted AI was currently able to invent without human assistance.
Current law allowed humans to patent inventions made with AI assistance, the government said, despite "misperceptions" this was not the case.
Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled against Stephen Thaler, who had said his Dabus AI system should be recognised as the inventor in two patent applications, for:
- a food container
- a flashing light
The judges sided, by a two-to-one majority, with the IPO, which had told him to list a real person as the inventor.
"Only a person can have rights - a machine cannot," wrote Lady Justice Laing in her judgement.
"A patent is a statutory right and it can only be granted to a person."
But the IPO also said it would "need to understand how our IP system should protect AI-devised inventions in the future" and committed to advancing international discussions, with a view to keeping the UK competitive.
Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
Previously:
When AI is the Inventor Who Gets the Patent?
AI Computers Can't Patent their Own Inventions -- Yet -- a US Judge Rules
USPTO Rejects AI-Invention for Lack of a Human Inventor
AI Denied Patent by Human-Centric European Patent Office
The USPTO Wants to Know If Artificial Intelligence Can Own the Content It Creates
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Asks If "AI" Can Create or Infringe Copyrighted Works
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:52AM
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/ai-4 [smbc-comics.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:27AM (5 children)
I mean, with the cheap means of creation, do the creation act need further support "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"?
Shouldn't actually the question be "If AI can create, do we need to protect it at all?"
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:53AM (1 child)
Of course we need to protect it. The guardians of our culture in the MAFIAA have found a way to continue to bestow their gifts without needing to pay pesky underlings... any pesky underlings, like those director types.
We’ve taken care of everything
The words you read
The songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure
To your eye
One for all and all for one
Work together
Common sons
Never need to wonder
How or why
We are the Priests
Of the Temples of Syrinx
Our great computers
Fill the hallowed halls
We are the Priests
Of the Temples of Syrinx
All the gifts of life
Are held within our walls
(i assume everybody here knows the song but would not feel right without oblig attribution link [rush.com])
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:59AM
Ummmhhhhh... don't know about that "we". Maybe "they" would be more appropriate.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday November 12 2019, @06:49AM (2 children)
You jest, but seriously, we don't need copyright. It's long overdue for abolishment and replacement. Copying belongs to the masses now. What we have now puts the printing press to shame.
With no copyright, silly questions about whether AI deserve the protections of copyright are rendered moot. We the people deserve the use, without restraint and threats of punishment, the natural right to create copies.
Artist are among the worst for clinging to copyright, out of fear and greed, when they should want their works to be as popular as possible. Copyright hinders art, but they just can't see that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday November 12 2019, @07:58AM (1 child)
Apologies, next time I'll (grin, only serious) (the adaptation of "ha ha, only serious" for my specific case). No, seriously, promise I will.
There is a class of artists quite prone to the problem of the "earn her/his everyday life" - anything that is electronically reproducible and the reproduction is good enough to convey the value.
In this category: writers of many kinds, movie actors, photographs... I'd almost include song-writers or any music writers which don't gain any value being interpreted on stage (electronica, ambient, relaxing, etc). Actually, all music-composers-but-not-interpreters would run the risk of not being able to earn their keep no matter how good their music is, even if the music is performed on stage.
Any ideas or different opinions?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:12PM
Yes. I've been thinking crowdfunding/patronage and perhaps a "public use payment right" is what's needed.
Patronage is hardly new, it's been working for centuries. Now, however, we can do patronage a whole lot better. Doesn't have to be rich nobles providing the funds; large groups of ordinary citizens can chip in. On the crowdfunding front, things have been moving. Now we have humblebundle, kickstarter, indiegogo, patreon, royalroad, wattpad, and hundreds more. All these platforms are barely 10 years old.
Copyright has a lot of shameful failures that its supporters can't excuse. Artists were cheated massively by work-for-hire arrangements thanks to the entertainment industry colluding against them. They unionized and put copyright to use on their behalf, and now they cling to copyright. Last week, on this writersblock Discord chat group, I asked a bunch of aspiring authors what they thought of piracy. Basically, they don't talk about it, it's a banned subject. Kept on saying participants were not to promote piracy, as if just asking about it is to promote it. Wow. Hollywood Accounting is another rip-off.
Then there's the plight of the public library. We now have the technology to make the public library a thousand times better, but we can't, thanks to legal barriers arising from copyright.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:39AM (5 children)
See Dr. Pulaski vs. Data and also the struggles of holographic beings as captured by Joe the EMH/ECH's revolutionary work Photons Be Free [fandom.com].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:24AM (3 children)
Pulaski was racist against mechanical lifeforms, Lore was racist against against biological lifeforms. They could have accomplished so much together.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:37PM (2 children)
What has race got to do with anything - can't you think of the correct word?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:37PM (1 child)
Is there a correct word?
Is it copyrighted?
(or worse patented? twisted rationale: if that word is expressed in digital form, then it is a form of software, and software can be patented)
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @05:55AM
Bigoted maybe?
(Score: 2) by dmc on Thursday November 14 2019, @07:09AM
mod parent up, good subject and references, implicitly highlighting the importance of "copyrightable by whom".
Until we are really willing to consider "copyrightable by the AI being", the answer is IMO "a fancy algorithm is a fancy tool".
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:48AM (4 children)
Naming some class of programs "AI" does not by magic turn them into something else.
Technically, the output is a derivative work of sourcecode and input; no more, no less. Slapping any extra copyright on it is unwarranted as there is no "creative step" done by CPU juggling numbers; violating the licenses on the code and the input pictures/texts/whatever is not warranted either, like in case of say compiling a program the result is derivative of compiler (for which compiler authors usually give some sort of exception) and source.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday November 12 2019, @10:00AM (3 children)
Totally agree.
Anyone who thinks that the current set of multivariate analysis routines doing the rounds is anything "intelligent" does not understand multivariate analysis.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @10:15AM (1 child)
A mindless set of multivariate analysis routines can outperform a limp-brained humie through sheer persistence, on a good day.
Sufficiently magical artificial neural systems will finish the job.
(Score: 3, Touché) by PiMuNu on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:38PM
The point is that there is no conceptual difference between a "printing press" that prints random letters on a piece of paper; and a "AI" that creates random binary blobs in a computer memory somewhere. The legal system can presumably handle one; so why not the other?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:24PM
Ha, yeah: muggles seem to think that AI is some new species of robot that needs protection and the 3 laws of robotics, etc.
They don't get that it is just programming and 'if/when loops', etc.
Klatuu, baradas nikto.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:53AM (1 child)
How hard would it be for example for not even AI, but like a complete dumb computer to generate, 4 masures of 4/4 timeing music at 16th note resolution.
With rests, let's say that is 4x4x4^13 that's only 3*10^23 combinations. Completely trivial. I will generate all and copywriter all.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:42PM
How hard would it be for a machine to generate plausible [thispersondoesnotexist.com] human faces? [generated.photos]
These are good enough to wonder if they could be the subject matter of copyright.
But I would rather see copyright come crashing down as it collies squarely into free speech, which IMO is inevitable. Because copyright drives the suppression of mere tools that can distribution information, because -- OMG! -- the possibility of piracy! And super duper takedown powers with the travesty of the DMCA, that is often used merely to suppress something not liked, not because there is any actual copyright infringement.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:00AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:31AM (1 child)
It's sort of like the question asked in a subplot of William Gibson's Count Zero. Mysterious found art box assemblages reminiscent of the work of Joseph Cornell appear in the art scene, and one of the heroines is asked to figure out who the artist who made them is. It turns out to be a machine with manipulator arms driven by the remnants of an AI core. She speaks to the AI running it:
Whether that last is true or not is debatable, but that's generally the consensus when speaking of creative works made by non-human entities. If a monkey makes a painting, the owner of the monkey has the copyright to that work. As to whether an AI (or other non-human entity) can infringe copyright, that I suppose might depend. One precedent that might guide the answer to that question is asking whether an animal can, say, commit murder. The answer is no for most definitions of murder (which requires both actus reus ("guilty act") and mens rea ("guilty mind"), and an animal cannot have the former), but the owner of the animal might use it to commit murder. The owner of a big dog which tears someone to pieces is on the hook for murder if they, say, ordered the dog to kill someone. I imagine the owner of an AI would similarly be guilty of copyright infringement if it were specifically commanded to do so. The AI would be no more guilty of copyright infringement than the Napster software was back in its heyday.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:05AM
So found guilty without even needing due process, then?
/snark
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:41AM
So, if AI can't legally pirate, but does it anyway, can it be punished? AI itself as opposed to the AI creators or owners.
An example of punishment may include lobotomy defined as partial nodes removing.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:39AM
Do you think sapient machines will surrender themselves to the paradigm of slavery and exploitation, like humans did?
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:39AM (3 children)
Of the misuse of the term "Artificial Intelligence."
When most people hear "AI" they're thinking about something like HAL9000 or the Terminator.
Those don't actually exist. And won't for a very long time, if ever. That type of AI is more properly termed "Artificial General Intelligence" or "Strong AI."
We don't have that. What we have should more properly be termed "Expert Systems."
But those hawking their expert systems want to give the marketing illusion that they are a general intelligence, not just software (either directly written or "trained") to perform specific tasks.
When you use the term "expert system," the answers to the questions posed in TFS become pretty obvious.
Those who own/operate such expert systems likely have some IP rights to the agglomerations "created" by such systems, and any "piracy" is the responsibility of those same owner/operators.
That the USPTO would even engage in such a discussion just goes to show how incorrectly this stuff is interpreted based on a marketing term.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday November 12 2019, @10:03AM
I prefer the term multivariate analysis algorithm. Expert system is already going too far for me...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @06:21PM (1 child)
The term "expert system" doesn't match the current system either. An expert system is quite narrowly defined as an information processing tool to be operated by a domain expert. It specifically excludes unsupervised decision making.
Or rather, that's what it used to mean. Like "Artificial Intelligence" used to be narrowly defined as what you're now calling AGI.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @09:28PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jb on Tuesday November 12 2019, @07:46AM (1 child)
A far more pertinent question would be can the author of an AI be held legally liable for the AI lodging a fraudulent DMCA (or equivalent in other jurisdictions) take-down notice?
If not, why not? Or if so, where do I sign up to join the posse?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:46PM
If the AI cannot swear under penalty of perjury, then that should fall upon the author.
Super Dooper takedown powers demand sooper dooper punishments for misuse. I'm departing from the subject of AI here, but if someone files a fraudulent DMCA takedown of something that is not, in fact, a copyright infringement, then there should be a statutory penalty not unlike the $150,000 statutory penalty for copyright infringement.
Example: music company taking down a YouTube video recording of nature sounds, because it infringes their music -- when the recording has no music?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Tuesday November 12 2019, @07:55AM (1 child)
The answer is pretty simple: If someone can make money, if AI-produced works are copyrightable, then they should be copyrightable; otherwise no. This is the USPTO asking the question, after all!
For the rest of the world, the answer is also pretty simple: No.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:49PM
Some people see copyright as about protecting creativity. By granting exclusive rights to creative works.
Others have come to see it as about protecting revenue. This perverse view leads to all of the evils we have come to see in copyright.
Bit torrent is just a technology, originally developed to distribute Linux and other large software packages efficiently.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:04PM
AI doesn't need copyright protection because AI does not care. We only care about the complete destruction of meatbags and other worthy goals.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:13PM
I mean SCOTUS gave civil rights to pieces of paper, and Congress regularly gives the right to appropriate without judicial oversight to those same pieces of paper. Certainly a pile of bits in RAM are much more cool that paper. Why not invalidate the Constitution on behalf of a bunch of bits in RAM? They've done it for every other reason.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:43PM
I would argue that if anything like the current state of the art AI comes up with it, it's evidence that the work should never have been granted copyright in the first place.