A year ago, #OTD I published the following post on my Facebook profile with an image of the digital art I had created:
2024-01-06 6:30 am MT digital art creation generated by entering keyword prompts in image art ai and manipulating further with multiple applications.
For artists wondering whether this work is copyrightable, I turned to Bing Co-Pilot (ChatGPT) for help. Here is the prompt I used:
“I have been creating digital art with Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter for years. Now that we have ai art generation tools, I use the ai art generation as my foundation in creating final digital artwork. I am confused as to how to refer to my work. Am I still an artist? Will my final work be copyrightable?”
Here is the answer Bing Co-Pilot came up with:
“It’s great to hear that you have been creating digital art for years! With the advent of AI art generation tools, it’s natural to incorporate them into your creative process. You are still an artist, and your final work is copyrightable. However, there are some nuances to consider when it comes to AI-generated artwork.
AI-generated artwork is created by algorithms and image information gathered over time, so there is no human artist of AI art 1. In the United States, a federal judge ruled in 2023 that AI artwork cannot meet federal copyright standards because “Copyright law is ‘limited to the original intellectual conceptions of the author’” 1. With no author, there is no copyright. It is irrelevant if a human made the computer system or scripted the algorithm for which its AI is trained upon – if a human or group of humans didn’t originally create the artwork, it is not permissible to be copyrighted in the United States.
However, the artwork used to train the generator algorithms is often copyrighted, owned, or attributed to real human artists and creators. As a result, there may be copyright infringements when creating AI-generated art 1. Therefore, it’s important to be mindful of the source material used to train the AI art generation tools and ensure that you have the necessary permissions to use them.
In summary, you are still an artist, and your final work is copyrightable. However, when incorporating AI-generated artwork into your creative process, it’s important to be mindful of the source material used to train the AI art generation tools and ensure that you have the necessary permissions to use them.”
— Research by Barbara Tomlin, Geeky Artist 