A Friday AI-related federal ruling might potentially impact the ongoing writers' and actors' strikes going on in Hollywood.
A judge upheld a finding from the US Copyright Office that declared a piece of art created by artificial intelligence is not open to copyright protection, The Hollywood Reporter reports. Human authorship is a bedrock requirement” when it comes to copyright protection, the ruling says.
At issue is a piece of art called "A Recent Entrance to Parade," which was “autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine.” The art was denied a copyright by the Copyright Office, which cited the need for the human element. The “artist” sued in an attempt to obtain the copyright despite that rejection.
While the ruling focused on a piece of physical art, it’s also bound to catch the attention of studio execs. One factor in the ongoing strikes in Hollywood is the use of AI in script writing and acting. If that AI work is not protected, then it could raise issues for the studios in the future.
In January, several artists filed suit against AI generators Stability Diffusion, Midjourney, and DreamUP claiming that the AI art generators are trained on copyrighted materials without the consent of the content owners or credit or compensation.
In July, comedian Sarah Silverman also sued Meta and OpenAI for copyright infringement claiming that her work was used to train their chatbots without the comedian’s consent. Those lawsuits also include authors Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden.
