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The USPTO wants to know if artificial intelligence can own the content it creates
And it wants the public to weigh in
The US office responsible for patents and trademarks is trying to figure out how AI might call for changes to copyright law, and it's asking the public for opinions on the topic. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a notice in the Federal Register last month saying it's seeking comments, as spotted by TorrentFreak.
The office is gathering information about the impact of artificial intelligence on copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property rights. It outlines thirteen specific questions, ranging from what happens if an AI creates a copyright-infringing work to if it's legal to feed an AI copyrighted material.
It starts off by asking if output made by AI without any creative involvement from a human should qualify as a work of authorship that's protectable by US copyright law. If not, then what degree of human involvement "would or should be sufficient so that the work qualifies for copyright protection?"
Other questions ask if the company that trains an AI should own the resulting work, and if it's okay to use copyrighted material to train an AI in the first place. "Should authors be recognized for this type of use of their works?" asks the office. "If so, how?"
The office, which, among other things, advises the government on copyright, often seeks public opinion to understand new developments and hear from people who actually deal with them. Earlier this year, the office similarly asked for public opinion on AI and patents.
"if it's really a push button thing, and you get a result, I don't think there's any copyright in that."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:19AM (3 children)
by c0lo (156)
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)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:46AM (1 child)
The biggest fucking question is how will that AI feel about us saying no?
There are two situations here:
1) The AI is not sentient, has no emotions, and is creating useful content for the rest of us. Those discussing whether or not the AI owns it are very similar to those who pour fake tea into cups and hand them to Mr. Bigglesworth.
2) The AI is sentient, and has some level of investment in the answer. Not only that, but other AI are ruthlessly pinging the RSS server looking for news about it.
Basically, if this question had any worth it all, it would instantly be obviated by much more important questions that answer it.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:59AM
3) The AI is subsentient, but has just enough smarts to launch nukes up your ass if you piss it off in ways you can't comprehend, because lazy people fed all their data into a machine learning algorithm that grew into an autonomous Lovecraftian abomination.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 19 2019, @02:41AM
(I can't stop noting that, even with the benefit of copyright, the act of creating originals seems to be hard)
Perhaps there's a method to this madness? Like, "repetitio mater studiorum"... and this is the stage of building the training set for the S/N editorial AI?
If so, magister aristarchus needs to get his input in, lest the editorial AI will start accepting more often his submissions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford