Oh, also by the way you said you were leaving the thread and then came back. That gave the impression of anger and frustration, somehow.
I still say that the monkey should be considered to own the copyright on those pictures.
I was wanting to avoid the appearance of threadshitting, because I found the premise really silly.
I’m not a lawyer so this is just an opinion.
After reading through the monkey selfie stuff, I am pretty surprised at the outcome and it seems to imply that in the case of the google AI, nobody would own the copyright.
That is the only logical conclusion because in both cases the person that owned the camera did not actually “take” the picture and there are no alternative humans that could argue they did “take” the picture.
My opinion is that Slater should own the copyright because he set up the conditions.
Even when a person clicks the button, if we really dig into what happens, it seems like there is a chain of indirect events that could be argued are just “setting up the conditions” also, but at a much lower and faster physical level.
I think if the monkey can write its full name and address on a statutory declaration, asserting its right to the IP, and sign it in front of witnesses, then I’d be in favour of granting it copyright.
Until then, sorry, no banana.
I gave the relevant facts to show otherwise. The case where this idea could be tested was settled out of court, after it was failed to be dismissed. If the law is clear cut, then a case is usually dismissed. It is thus reasonable to conclude that it is not so clear cut.
I also don’t see what this response has to do with my first paragraph. In fact, you seem to agree with it and the other people saying similar things in subsequent posts.
I’m inclined to take the position that no copyright is created.
The monkey doesn’t get copyright or a banana? That’s just mean.
This is how I follow the legal logic chain, too. In which case, Google (or anyone who can get ahold of the image) can use it in any way they see fit. How many years until Getty goes out of business if that’s the case?
The primary value of stock photography is having a low, fixed cost for use of the photograph, without the risk of the copyright holder suing you. If just having a lot of pictures was all it took, Google image searching would have put Getty out of business years ago.
And as I said, Google potentially will have an image catalog that far surpasses any other. If the quality images are only .001% of the total, but the total is 14.6G photos, there are going to be plenty of good ones. Zero is a “low, fixed cost” and with no copyright there is zero risk of a copyright holder suing. Why wouldn’t people use these images rather than use ones that require a fee for use?
ETA: This is getting ahead of the essential question of who owns the copyright, of course.
But these cameras do not upload the images to Google. So Google isn’t going to have a massive cache of random non-copyright pictures.
This seems somewhat misleading and focuses on this particular camera and not on the issue of AIs creating images.
It seems misleading because although this particular camera does not automatically upload to a cloud, images will be uploaded to Google.
So Google will be building a cache of images with dubious copyright.
Suppose there’s a new GoPro camera with AI and it takes video. I buy one and set it up somewhere, allowing the AI to decide what to film and how to frame the shot. I set the camera up to upload the images directly to YouTube. After I set it up, a bird makes contact and the camera’s position shifts. Who owns the copyright on those images? Me, GoPro, YouTube or nobody?
I think it’s rather a stretch to assume that Google will assert the right to use images uploaded by users as it sees fit. It will still be bound by its own terms of service.
Again, this is getting way ahead of the essential question of who owns the copyright.
You really, really, really don’t seem to grasp what an AI is, in this case. You know how autocorrect learns your typical word use and adjusts its suggestions accordingly? Well, that is an AI. Nobody is going to attempt to force anyone to share their writing credits with autocorrect.
You keep asserting that “credit going to an algorithm” isn’t what you are asking about, but it is. You are using a “bad science fiction” mental image if AI,* not* what AI actually is.
I think what he is doing is correctly pointing out, based on the monkey case, that a camera that takes pictures without a human directly touching the button to trigger the action causes the resulting image to be un-copyrightable by any human.
Meaning that photos taken with a camera with the “auto choose when to take picture” feature are all automatically in the public domain.
It seems to be the logical conclusion based on the monkey case.
But you *are *pressing a button that says “take pictures when you see a smiling face.” He has yet to prove how this is materially different than current camera options that include “take a photo in 10 seconds”, “take a photo every 5 minutes”, and “take a photo when you sense motion.”
Not at all. By that logic ALL photographs would be in the public domain, because the human didn’t open and close the shutter themselves, they allowed a mechanical system with unknown and variable response time to do it for him/her.
A human bought the camera intending to use it for this specific purpose. The human chose the camera’s position and framing, decided when to turn it on and off, chose the events that would take place in it’s field of view.
None of these things are anything like the monkey case whatsoever, where an unexpected sentient being took unanticipated actions and happened to produce something useful; there was no human intent involved at all. As others have pointed out, there are tons of technologies now that separate the action of the button press from the shutter release (sometimes by vast amounts of time), and nobody’s claiming that those photos aren’t copyrighted. A hundred non-human-controlled actions happen every time you take a photo.
Mind you, I think the monkey case was wrongly decided, but either way it has nothing to do with these auto cameras. A more analogous situation might be automated security camera footage, and I know I’ve seen copyright marks on some of those.
If my camera takes a picture and I delete it, do I owe Google money for destroying their property?