Tuesday, February 25, 2020
If My AI Wrote this Post, Could I Own the Copyright?
The Scholarly Kitchen: Every new technology poses challenges for the concept of intellectual property rights ownership. When copyright was first introduced into legislation in the US following the adoption of the Constitution, the copyright of works extended to “maps, charts, and books” and only for a period of 14 years. Growth of the coverage of copyright over time moved forward in fits and starts, occasionally with the not-so-subtle hand of the Supreme Court in the United States.
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Copyright laws are so language and wording specific that anything that is slightly in question is hard to argue. This article opens with an update to copyright laws regarding photography. I find it interesting how photographs were not seen as artistically independent works for awhile. I think this is a good comparison in terms of artificial intelligence. I think that artificial intelligence has a valid opportunity to hold a strong case for holding a copyright when someone has programmed a machine to perform a specific task. I don’t know much about AI and machine learning, but I do know that at some point a task is programmed and I think at some point the machine can combine what it has been programmed with to create alternate results. I think in the latter case, this work or results cannot be held under copyright. Part of this article explains that copyright applies to things made by humans and not machines or animals, which quite literally cuts out all AI possibilities, however I think if a human codes a machine to do a specific task, then that process and results should be able to be copyrighted.
I feel like I learned something after reading this article. I had no idea that the Copyright Office had made an explicit rule that only things created by humans could be copyrighted by law. Some of these weird and oddly specific rules only exist because someone did attempt it once before (like when they tried to code Air Bud in the movie but there was no rule that dogs couldn’t play basketball). I also think that this will eventually bring up the conversation as to whether or not artificial intelligence is distinct enough of an entity to be its own entity. Right now I think AI is not advanced enough to be considered its own entity - it’s still too heavily influenced by its programmers and creators. However as the need for a human source lessens I think that rule will need to be re-defined.
I really did not know that Copyright Laws only pertain to human made creations, which is just such a weird concept to me because even things that are not necessarily made by humans, in this case, by an AI, it still uses human input and knowledge and it seems like the creator should have an option to make sure that the effort that he is inputting, in which ever shape and form, are not copied by anyone else because that is just wrong. But it seems like this is an accepted concept where people are fine with having no copyright to things that they have contributed to and in essence, are open to being adopted by other people in a scenario where they can be copyrighted.
It does seem to me that they reach of this guideline should be looked over or at least discussed because it does, to me, come of as a big deal, having a right over your creation.
My initial thought when reading this title was no, you probably shouldn’t, because that opens up a nasty can of worms regarding copyright law, and that thought was confirmed upon reading. One part that really stuck with me was when it mentioned that if AI works could be copyrighted by the creator, eventually we might see an arms race of AI random word and story generation in an attempt to be the first to write out any given sequence of words. It’s like the old idiom that if a monkey bangs on a typewriter for long enough, it will eventually write Hamlet - it may take infinity, but eventually it will happen. AI content creation excels at randomness and speed, and if many AIs are constantly writing, they could essentially get copyrighted any sequence of words and make them unable to be used by other, human, writers. I also think that the absence of copyright protection also brings up its own problems - if an AI creates something, it becomes instantly public domain, and the people who created the AI get no credit or profit.
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