I hadn’t noticed this story before, but it seems lawsuits are being filed and others prepared to go after AI companies because the generators are taking bits and pieces of text (song, pictures, code) and scrambling it and then presenting it as new.
This gets down to a definition of what is “fair use”, and some inventors and coders are saying they are finding strings of their code in AI “creations”. Since the code was original written by humans, running it through the mixmaster of an AI engine does not render it “new”, or does it?
As with any new technology there are barriers being broken that either the courts or legislature(s) will have to figure out. Expect the courts to get there sooner.
That is going to be a hard case to prove. Bob Kearns invented the intermittent windshield wiper circuit using off the shelf components. Ford’s defense in Kearns’ infringement suit was it could not be patented because he used off the shelf components. Kearns’ reply was that the components had been assembled in a novel and non-obvious way, so his patent was valid. In the scene in the film where he demonstrates this point, he reads from a well known, and copyrighted, book. Every word used in the book was a common, English language, word, in general use for decades, if not centuries, but, because they were put together in a novel way, the complete work could be copyrighted.
In the case of art or pictures using segments is infringing.
The color blue is in the public domain. The word “BLUE” in a yellow color with a red border and pink flowers, chopping the word in half so it is only “BL” with all the colors and flowers and then mauling it to change it is still infringement.
Anything in the public domain, PD, can be freely used.
Coders would have a harder time. Unless the code is really laid out as an algorithm partially in a the new work.
BTW I will be registering the code for my game. The entire thing is coded on the Microsoft developer platform but the setup and structure of the game are mine.
The other way of seeing it. When I was on Amazon I put up a flute image and Amazon took it down. One guy selling a flute image on a shirt had stopped everyone else from putting up flute images. A flute has keys and can only really sit on a table top a certain way usually with the keys up. I read the four points for a challenge that Amazon wanted from me and responded. I won my argument, and the flute was put up as a T shirt with image. The problem is slicing things more and more till there is no copyright in a category.
With AI output is very high. Meaning the copyrights get narrower and narrower in the scope of a claim.
Here’s another one. 22 songs, same four cords. The tempo and strumming pattern change a bit, but watch the guy’s fingers. Same four cords, over and over. In the late 60s, I heard people ridiculing pop music for all sounding the same.
Recent piece I read said that was true of most of the stuff coming out of the Brill building, and even the earliest Beatles, but then John & Paul started experimenting - aided in no small part by George Martin - and took rock and pop into the wonderland of multiple chords, progressions, etc.
Anyway, the answer to music, like words, is “infinite.”
