Friday, April 14, 2023

How We Think About Copyright and AI Art; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), April 3, 2023

 KIT WALSH, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); How We Think About Copyright and AI Art

"Currently, copyright law protects artists who are influenced by colleagues and mentors and the media they admire by permitting them to mimic elements of others’ work as long as their art isn’t “substantially similar” and/or is a fair use. Thus, the same legal doctrines that give artists the breathing room to find inspiration in others’ works also protect diffusion models. Rewriting those doctrines could cause harm far beyond any damage Stable Diffusion is causing.

In our companion blog post, we explore some of the other consequences. In particular, we discuss who would likely benefit from such a regime (spoiler: it’s not individual creators). We also discuss some alternative approaches that might actually help creators.

Done right, copyright law is supposed to encourage new creativity. Stretching it to outlaw tools like AI image generatorsor to effectively put them in the exclusive hands of powerful economic actors who already use that economic muscle to squeeze creatorswould have the opposite effect."

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