This is the First-Ever AI Image to Be Granted Copyright Protection; PetaPixel, February 12, 2025

MATT GROWCOOT, PetaPixel; This is the First-Ever AI Image to Be Granted Copyright Protection

"A company has secured the first-ever copyright protection for an artwork entirely generated by AI from the U.S. Copyright Office.

Kent Keirsey, CEO of Invoke, demonstrated to the U.S. Copyright Office that he had inputted enough human creativity into the image to warrant protection. 

Invoke is a generative AI platform for professional studios to create visual media. Keirsey used Invoke’s inpainting features to iterate upon an AI-generated image, coordinating and arranging where to inpaint and then selecting from multiple options to create a composite work which he calls A Single Piece of American Cheese. He added roughly 35 AI edits to the AI image."

U.S. Copyright Office Releases Publication Produced by Group of Economic Scholars Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy; U.S. Copyright Office, February 12, 2025

 U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 1062; U.S. Copyright Office Releases Publication Produced by Group of Economic Scholars Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy

"Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is releasing Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy: Context and Direction for Economic Research. The publication, produced by a group of economic scholars, discusses the economic issues at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright policy. The group engaged in several months of substantive discussions, consultation with technical experts, and research, culminating in a daylong roundtable event. Participants spent the subsequent months articulating and refining the roundtable discussions, resulting in today’s publication. The group’s goal was identifying the most consequential economic characteristics of AI and copyright and what factors may inform policy decisions. 

"Development of AI technology has meaningful implications for the economic frameworks of copyright policy, and economists have only just begun to explore those," said Copyright Office Chief Economist Brent Lutes. "The Office convened an economic roundtable on AI and copyright policy with experts to help expediate research and coordinate the research community. The goal of this group’s work is to provide the broader economic research community a structured and rigorous framework for considering economic evidence." 

This publication serves as a platform for articulating the ideas expressed by participants as part of the roundtable. All principal contributors submitted written materials summarizing the group’s prior discussions on a particular topic, with editorial support provided by the Office of the Chief Economist. The many ideas and views discussed in this project do not necessarily represent the views of every roundtable participant or their respective institutions. The U.S. Copyright Office does not take a position on these ideas for the purposes of this project."

The US Copyright Office's new ruling on AI art is here - and it could change everything; ZDNet, February 3, 2025

David Gewirtz, Senior Contributing Editor, ZDNet; The US Copyright Office's new ruling on AI art is here - and it could change everything

"Last week, the US Copyright Office released its detailed report and comprehensive guidelines on the issue of copyright protection and AI-generated work.

For a government legal document, it is a fascinating exploration of the intersection of artificial intelligence and the very concept of authorship and creativity. The study's authors conduct a deep dive, taking in comments from the general public and experts alike, and producing an analysis of what it means to creatively author a work.

They then explore the issue of whether an AI-generated work versus an AI-assisted work is subject to copyright protection, and what that means not only for individual authors but also for the encouragement of creativity and innovation in society as a whole.

This is the second of what will be a three-part report from the Copyright Office. Part 1, published last year, explored digital replicas, using digital technology to "realistically replicate" someone's voice or appearance.

Part 3 is expected to be released later this year. It will focus on the issues of training AIs using copyrighted works, aspects of licensing, and how liability might be allocated in cases where a spectacular AI failure can be attributed to training (which sometimes results in litigation)."

Copyright Office suggests AI copyright debate was settled in 1965; Ars Technica, January 30, 2025

ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; Copyright Office suggests AI copyright debate was settled in 1965

"For stakeholders who have been awaiting this guidance for months, the Copyright Office report may not change the law, but it offers some clarity.

For some artists who hoped to push the Copyright Office to adapt laws, the guidelines may disappoint, leaving many questions about a world of possible creative AI uses unanswered. But while a case-by-case approach may leave some artists unsure about which parts of their works are copyrightable, seemingly common cases are being resolved more readily. According to the Copyright Office, after each decision, it gets easier to register AI works that meet similar standards for copyrightability. Perhaps over time, artists will grow more secure in how they use AI and whether it will impact their exclusive rights to distribute works.

That's likely cold comfort for the artist advocating for prompting alone to constitute authorship. One AI artist told Ars in October that being denied a copyright has meant suffering being mocked and watching his award-winning work freely used anywhere online without his permission and without payment. But in the end, the Copyright Office was apparently more sympathetic to other commenters who warned that humanity's progress in the arts could be hampered if a flood of easily generated, copyrightable AI works drowned too many humans out of the market...

Although the Copyright Office suggested that this week's report might be the most highly anticipated, Jernite said that Hugging Face is eager to see the next report, which officials said would focus on "the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works, including licensing considerations and the allocation of any potential liability.""

AI-assisted works can get copyright with enough human creativity, says US copyright office; AP, January 29, 2025

 MATT O’BRIEN, AP; AI-assisted works can get copyright with enough human creativity, says US copyright office

"Artists can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by the U.S. Copyright Office that could further clear the way for the use of AI tools in Hollywood, the music industry and other creative fields.

The nation’s copyright office, which sits in the Library of Congress and is not part of the executive branch, receives about half a million copyright applications per year covering millions of individual works. It has increasingly been asked to register works that are AI-generated.

And while many of those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, the report issued Wednesday clarifies the office’s approach as one based on what the top U.S. copyright official describes as the “centrality of human creativity” in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections."

Copyright Office Releases Part 2 of Artificial Intelligence Report; U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 1060, January 29, 2025

 U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 1060; Copyright Office Releases Part 2 of Artificial Intelligence Report

"Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is releasing Part 2 of its Report on the legal and policy issues related to copyright and artificial intelligence (AI). This Part of the Report addresses the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI. The Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology, as they have applied to technological innovations in the past. It concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts. The Office confirms that the use of AI to assist in the process of creation or the inclusion of AI-generated material in a larger human-generated work does not bar copyrightability. It also finds that the case has not been made for changes to existing law to provide additional protection for AI-generated outputs.

“After considering the extensive public comments and the current state of technological development, our conclusions turn on the centrality of human creativity to copyright,” said Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office. “Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection. Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine, however, would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright.”

In early 2023, the Copyright Office announced a broad initiative to explore the intersection of copyright and AI. Since then, the Office has issued registration guidance for works incorporating AI-generated content, hosted public listening sessions and webinars, met with experts and stakeholders, published a notice of inquiry seeking input from the public, and reviewed more than 10,000 responsive comments, which served to inform these conclusions.

The Report is being released in three Parts. Part 1 was published on July 31, 2024, and recommended federal legislation to respond to the unauthorized distribution of digital replicas that realistically but falsely depict an individual. The final, forthcoming Part 3 will address the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works, including licensing considerations and the allocation of any potential liability.

As announced last year, the Office also plans to supplement its March 2023 registration guidance and update the relevant sections of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices.

For more information about the Copyright Office’s AI Initiative, please visit the website."

U.S. Copyright Office to Begin Issuing Further AI Guidance in January 2025; The National Law Review, January 2, 2025

 John Hines of The Sedona Conference  , The National Law Review; U.S. Copyright Office to Begin Issuing Further AI Guidance in January 2025

"Parts 2 and 3, which have not yet been released, will be of heightened interest to content creators and to individuals and businesses involved in developing and deploying AI technologies. Ultimate regulatory and legislative determinations could materially recalibrate the scope of ownership and protection afforded to works of authorship, and the stakes are extremely high...

Part 2 of the report, which the Copyright Office expects to publish “after the New Year Holiday,” will address the copyrightability of AI-generated works, and more specifically, how the nature and degree of such use affects copyrightability and registrability. Current law is clear that to be copyrightable, a work must be created by a human. E.g., Thaler v. Perlmutter, 678 F.Supp. 140 (D.DC 2023), on appeal. However assistive tools are used in virtually all creation, from pencils to cameras to photo-editing software programs. In the context of registrability, the Copyright Office offered the following distinction in its March 2023 guidance: “[W]hether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.” In Part 2, the Copyright Office will have an additional opportunity to explore these and related issues – this time with the advantage of the many comments offered through the Notice of Inquiry process.

Part 3 of the report, which the Copyright Office anticipates releasing “in the first quarter of 2025,” will focus on issues associated with training data. AI models, depending on their size and scope, may train on millions of documents—many of which are copyrighted or copyrightable— acquired from the Internet or through acquisition of various robust databases. Users of “trained” AI technologies will typically input written prompts to generate written content or images, depending on the model (Sora is now available to generate video). The output is essentially a prediction based on a correlation of values in the model (extracted from the training data) and values that are derived from the user prompts.

Numerous lawsuits, perhaps most notably the case that The New York Times filed against Microsoft and OpenAI, have alleged that the use of data to train AI models constitutes copyright infringement. In many cases there may be little question of copying in the course of uploading data to train the models. Among a variety of issues, a core common issue will be whether the use of the data for training purposes is fair use. Content creators, of course, point to the fact that they have built their livelihoods and/or businesses around their creations and that they should be compensated for what is a violation of their exclusive rights."

AI Developments at the U.S. Copyright Office in 2024; IP Watchdog, December 30, 2024

 BARRY WERBIN , IP Watchdog; AI Developments at the U.S. Copyright Office in 2024

"“The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.” Such is the conundrum facing the U.S Copyright Office in this era of rapidly expanding generative artificial intelligence technology. Human creativity has been the cornerstone of copyright protection for original works of authorship ever since the U.S. Constitution recognized copyright as a fundamental right to be protected for limited times. But the tenet that originality exists only when a human is primarily responsible for creating works of authorship is currently in flux and subject to extensive debate. Nowhere is this tension more visible than within the Copyright Office itself, which has been grappling with the core issue of what defines human creation when sophisticated technology like generative AI plays a significant role in creating works of authorship under the direction of a human creator."

Fate of AI and Fair Use Copyright Report Will Depend on Judges; Bloomberg Law, November 26, 2024

Jorja Siemons , Bloomberg Law; Fate of AI and Fair Use Copyright Report Will Depend on Judges

"Federal courts—not the US Copyright Office—will have the final say on implementing any recommendations from the office’s forthcoming report on the fair use ramifications of training AI on protected works...

Judges across the country are presiding over roughly three dozen lawsuits against OpenAI Inc., Microsoft Corp., Meta Platforms Inc., Anthropic PBC, and other AI companies. How they apply that framework as they wrestle with novel legal questions remains to be seen—and it may be Congress that benefits the most from the Copyright Office’s analysis."

Perlmutter Says Copyright Office Is Still Working to Meet ‘Ambitious Deadline’ for AI Report; IPWatchdog, November 14, 2024

EILEEN MCDERMOTT , IPWatchdog; Perlmutter Says Copyright Office Is Still Working to Meet ‘Ambitious Deadline’ for AI Report

"Asked by Subcommittee Chair Chris Coons (D-DE) what keeps her up at night when it comes to the AI issue, Perlmutter said “the speed at which this is all developing.” In September during IPWatchdog LIVE 2024, Perlmutter told LIVE attendees that while she’s confident the issues around copyright and AI will eventually be solved, she’s “less comfortable about what it means for humankind.”

Perlmutter recently came under fire from Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (R-WI), who sent a letter On Tuesday, October 29, to the Office asking for an update on the AI report, which Steil charged is no longer on track to be published by its stated target dates. Steil’s letter asked the Office to explain the delay in issuance of parts two and three, which Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter indicated in an oversight hearing by the Committee on House Administration would be published before the end of the summer and in the fall, respectively. “The importance of these reports cannot be overstated,” Steil wrote, explaining that copyright owners are relying on the Office to provide clear guidance. “The absence of these reports creates uncertainty for industries that are already grappling with AI-related challenges and hinders lawmakers’ ability to craft effective policy,” the letter added.

Perlmutter commented in the hearing that “we’ve been trying to set and follow our own ambitious deadlines” and the goal remains to get the rest of the report out by the end of the year, but that her key concern is to be “accurate and thoughtful.”

The forthcoming reports will include recommendations on how to deal with copyrightability of materials created using GAI and the legal implications of training on copyrighted works. The latter is most controversial and may in fact require additional legislation focusing on transparency requirements."

Video game libraries lose legal appeal to emulate physical game collections online; Ars Technica, October 25, 2024

KYLE ORLAND, Ars Technica; Video game libraries lose legal appeal to emulate physical game collections online

"Earlier this year, we reported on the video game archivists asking for a legal DMCA exemption to share Internet-accessible emulated versions of their physical game collections with researchers. Today, the US Copyright Office announced once again that it was denying that request, forcing researchers to travel to far-flung collections for access to the often-rare physical copies of the games they're seeking.

In announcing its decision, the Register of Copyrights for the Library of Congresssided with the Entertainment Software Association and others who argued that the proposed remote access could serve as a legal loophole for a free-to-access "online arcade" that could harm the market for classic gaming re-releases. This argument resonated with the Copyright Office despite a VGHF study that found 87 percent of those older game titles are currently out of print."

Public Knowledge, iFixit Free the McFlurry, Win Copyright Office DMCA Exemption for Ice Cream Machines; Public Knowledge, October 25, 2024

 Shiva Stella , Public Knowledge; Public Knowledge, iFixit Free the McFlurry, Win Copyright Office DMCA Exemption for Ice Cream Machines

"Today, the U.S. Copyright Office partially granted an exemption requested by Public Knowledge and iFixit to allow people to circumvent digital locks in order to repair commercial and industrial equipment. The Office did not grant the full scope of the requested exemption, but did grant an exemption specifically allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment – including soft serve ice cream machines similar to those available at McDonald’s. The Copyright Office reviewed the request as part of its 1201 review process, which encourages advocates and public interest groups to present arguments for exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it illegal to bypass a digital lock that protects a copyrighted work, such as a device’s software, even when there is no copyright infringement. Every three years, the Copyright Office reviews exemption requests and issues recommendations to the Librarian of Congress on granting certain exceptions to Section 1201. The recommendations go into effect once approved by the Librarian of Congress."

The Geography of Copyright Registrations; U.S. Copyright Office (USCO), September 11, 2024

 U.S. Copyright Office (USCO); The Geography of Copyright Registrations

"The U.S. Copyright Office has released a report, The Geography of Copyright Registrations. The study examines the geographic distribution of copyright claims registered by individuals and organizations within the United States. The purpose of the report is to better understand where the copyright system is used and how patterns of registrations differ across areas within the country.

The report reveals: 

• The majority of copyright registrations originate from a handful of large metropolitan areas. Approximately 40 percent of all copyright registrations originate from just five: New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Chicago.
• Within the United States, certain geographic areas specialize in different types of creative works. For example, registrants in the South register many copyrights for musical works, registrants in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states register many literary works, and registrants in California specialize in film and dramatic works. 
• Some areas have a high volume of registrations simply because of their large populations. When controlling for population, numerous locations at the city level emerge where individuals, companies, or universities are registering high concentrations of creative works. 

This report uses data from copyright claims registered between 2009 and 2022. A forthcoming report will focus on the demographics of copyright registrations in the United States."

The Fast-Moving Race Between Gen-AI and Copyright Law; Baker Donelson, July 10, 2024

Scott M. Douglass and Dominic Rota, Baker Donelson ; The Fast-Moving Race Between Gen-AI and Copyright Law

"It is still an open question whether plaintiffs will succeed in showing that use of copyrighted works to train generative AI constitutes copyright infringement and be able to overcome the fair use defense or succeed in showing that generative AI developers are removing CMI in violation of the DMCA.

The government has made some moves in the past few months to resolve these issues. The U.S. Copyright Office started an inquiry in August 2023, seeking public comments on copyright law and policy issues raised by AI systems, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced a new bill in April 2024, that would require people creating a training dataset for a generative AI system to submit to the Register of Copyrights a detailed summary of any copyrighted works used in training. These initiatives will most likely take some time, meaning that currently pending litigation is vitally important for defining copyright law as it applies to generative AI.

Recent licensing deals with news publishers appear to be anywhere from $1 million to $60 million per year, meaning that AI companies will have to pay an enormous amount to license all the copyrighted works necessary to train their generative AI models effectively. However, as potential damages in a copyright infringement case could be billions of dollars, as claimed by Getty Images and other plaintiffs, developers of generative AI programs should seriously consider licensing any copyrighted works used as training data."

You Can Create Award-Winning Art With AI. Can You Copyright It?; Bloomberg Law, June 5, 2024

Matthew S. Schwartz, Bloomberg Law; You Can Create Award-Winning Art With AI. Can You Copyright It?

"We delved into the controversy surrounding the use of copyrighted material in training AI systems in our first two episodes of this season. Now we shift our focus to the output. Who owns artwork created using artificial intelligence? Should our legal system redefine what constitutes authorship? Or, as AI promises to redefine how we create, will the government cling to historical notions of authorship?

Guests:

• Jason M. Allen, founder of Art Incarnate
• Sy Damle, partner in the copyright litigation group at Latham & Watkins
• Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and director of the US Copyright Office"

Copyright Board Upholds Latest Refusal to Register AI Generated Art; The Fashion Law (TFL), December 12, 2023

TFL ; Copyright Board Upholds Latest Refusal to Register AI Generated Art

"The Office primarily refused to register the work on the basis that it “lacks the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim.” Specifically, the Office stated that despite Sahni’s claim that the work includes some human creative input, the work is not registrable, as “this human authorship cannot be distinguished or separated from the final work produced by the computer program.” 

Following an initial request for reconsideration, in which Sahni argued that “the human authorship requirement does not and cannot mean a work must be created entirely by a human author,” the Copyright Office again concluded that the work could not be registered, as it “is a derivative work that does not contain enough original human authorship to support a registration.” The Office found that “the new aspects of the [SURYAST] work were generated by ‘the RAGHAV app, and not Mr. Sahni – or any other human author,'” making it so that the “derivative authorship was not the result of human creativity or authorship” and therefore, not registrable."

International Copyright Issues and Artificial Intelligence; U.S. Copyright Office, Wednesday, July 26, 2023 11 AM - 1 PM EDT

U.S. Copyright Office; International Copyright Issues and Artificial Intelligence

The United States is not alone in facing challenging questions about generative artificial intelligence and its implications for copyright law and policy. On July 26, 2023, join the Copyright Office for a discussion on global perspectives on copyright and AI. Leading international experts will discuss how other countries are approaching copyright questions including authorship, training, and exceptions and limitations. They will provide an overview of legislative developments in other regions and highlight possible areas of convergence and divergence.

This webinar is a part of the Copyright Office’s initiative to examine copyright law and policy issues raised by AI technology, including the scope of copyright in works generated using AI tools and the use of copyrighted materials in AI training. For more on copyright and AI, visit copyright.gov/ai.

Time: July 26, 2023, 11:00 a.m.- 1:00 p.m.

Speakers:

• Jane Ginsburg, Columbia Law School
• Andres Guadamuz, University of Sussex
• Bernt Hugenholtz, University of Amsterdam
• Matthew Sag, Emory University School of Law
• Luca Schirru, KU Leuven
• Marcus von Welser, Vossius
• Raquel Xalabarder Plantada, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
• Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, Ono Academic College
• Peter Yu, Texas A&M University School of Law"

The Library of Congress marks a year of helping solve copyright disputes; Federal News Network, July 14, 2023

 Tom Temin, Federal News Network; The Library of Congress marks a year of helping solve copyright disputes

"The Copyright Office’s equivalent of small claims court has helped hundreds of people solve disputes in its first year. The three-member Copyright Claims Board will help in cases worth up to $30,000. For a progress report,  Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Claims Board member Brad Newberg."

Why Does the U.S. Copyright Office Require Libraries to Lie to Users about Their Fair Use Rights? They Won’t Say.; The Scholarly Kitchen, July 5, 2023

RICK ANDERSON, The Scholarly Kitchen; Why Does the U.S. Copyright Office Require Libraries to Lie to Users about Their Fair Use Rights? They Won’t Say.

"Let’s be clear about what the problem is here. It’s not that patrons who use library-provided copies of copyrighted works in a manner beyond the scope of “private study, scholarship, or research” are in legal danger if their use falls within the full range of the fair use provisions in section 107. Again, the language of section 108 makes it very clear that owners of such copies are entirely within their rights to make full (fair) use of them, regardless of what the copyright warning notice prescribed by the Copyright Office says. The problem is that the Copyright Office, under color of authority ostensibly assigned to it by statute, requires libraries to misinform patrons about their rights. Although library patrons are in reality free to make full fair use of copies we provide them (or copies they make on our premises), we must tell them – every time they make or request a copy from us – that they have only a small subset of those rights.

How much does this disinformation end up constraining patrons’ exercise of their full rights under the law? It’s impossible to know, of course. But as a profession that sees itself at the vanguard of the fight against both mis- and disinformation, it certainly should rankle us that we’ve been drafted into a disinformation campaign that affects so many information seekers so directly.

It should rankle us even more that the U.S. Copyright Office, the very entity that has created this issue and is uniquely empowered to fix it, seems to have no interest in doing so. I hope my library colleagues (and everyone else who cares about libraries and archives, and about fair use) will join me in calling on the Copyright Office to change the language of its prescribed copyright warning notice, bringing it into full conformity with what the law actually says. (I’ve created an online petition for this purpose, and encourage all interested to sign it.)"

International Copyright Issues and Artificial Intelligence; U.S. Copyright Office, Webinar: Wednesday, July 26, 2023, 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. eastern time

 U.S. Copyright Office; International Copyright Issues and Artificial Intelligence Webinar

"The United States is not alone in facing challenging questions about artificial intelligence and its implications for copyright law and policy. On July 26, 2023, join the Copyright Office for a discussion on global perspectives on copyright and AI. Leading international experts will discuss how other countries are approaching copyright questions such as authorship, training, exceptions and limitations, and infringement. They will provide an overview of legislative developments in other regions and highlight possible areas of convergence and divergence involving generative AI.

This webinar is a part of the Copyright Office’s initiative to examine copyright law and policy issues raised by AI technology, including the scope of copyright in works generated using AI tools and the use of copyrighted materials in AI training. For more on copyright and AI, visit copyright.gov/ai.

Time: July 26, 2023, 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. eastern time

Speakers:

• Jane Ginsburg, Columbia Law School
• Andres Guadamuz, University of Sussex
• Bernt Hugenholtz, University of Amsterdam
• Matthew Sag, Emory University School of Law
• Luca Schirru, KU Leuven
• Marcus von Welser, Vossius
• Raquel Xalabarder Plantada, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
• Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, Ono Academic College
• Peter Yu, Texas A&M University School of Law"