AI Art and Copyright: The Battle Continues
The US Copyright Office has ruled that an award-winning piece of AI art, Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, cannot be copyrighted. The artwork, created by Matthew Allen, was generated using the AI program Midjourney. The Copyright Office maintained that copyright protections are not extended to artificial intelligence, even if it produces impressive art. This decision follows a legal consensus that copyright is limited to human authors. Allen plans to file a lawsuit against the US federal government, arguing that his work should be protected as a transformative use of copyrighted material. The ruling may have a chilling effect on the use of AI in art, but it remains unclear how many human tweaks would make an AI-generated work copyrightable.