The intersection of copyright and artificial intelligence (AI) has raised complex legal questions, particularly in determining the copyrightability of works created with the assistance of AI technologies.
Fenwick associate Aaron Dunn and counsel Christopher King co-authored an article for The Intellectual Property Strategist discussing a letter ruling by The United States Copyright Office on the copyrightability of Kristina Kashtanova's comic book-like work, “Zarya of the Dawn.” The work’s images were generated using the Midjourney AI technology. Midjourney creates images by analyzing existing visual works and following user cues of desired concepts or qualities. The Office concluded that the “distance” between the user’s original artistic conception and the system’s outcome of images was not close enough to afford the work copyright protection.
This ruling indicates future determinations of copyrightability of works involving AI will rely on whether the author is able to control and foresee with some measure of predictability the output of the authorial process.
Read the full article here.
The article was also published in Law.com (subscription required).