Can you? My understanding is that AI cannot claim copyright and my assumption would be that copyright law immediately extends authorship to the user operating the AI (or their employer).
So you're suggesting that an AI translation of, say, a novel removes human authorship from the result? Unless a human goes in and makes further "substantive transformations" to the AI generated work?
And if that's not what you are saying then how are you determining that prompts to and AI are not copyrighted by the author of the prompt? The results are nothing more than a derivative work of the prompt. So you are faced with having to determine whether the prompts themselves or in combination are copyrightable. Depending on the prompt they may or may not be, but you can't apply a blanket rule here.
(Notwithstanding that Claude inserts itself explicitly as co-author and the author is listed on the commit as well)
> The Copyright Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology, as they have applied to technological innovations in the past. It concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts.
People have tried over and over again to register copyright of AI output they supplied the prompts for, for example, in one instance[1], someone prompted AI with over 600+ cumulative iterations of prompting to arrive at the final product, and it wasn't accepted by the Copyright Office.
> In March 2023, the Office provided
public guidance on registration of works created by a generative-AI system. The guidance explained that, in considering an application for registration, the Office will ask “whether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.”
You are going to have to prove that things Claude stamps as co-authored are not the work of an "assisting instrument". It's certainly true that some vibe-coded one-shot thing might not apply.
I would also note that the applicant applying for copyright in your linked case explicitly refused guidance and advice from the examiner. That could well be because the creation of that specific work was not shaped much by that artist's efforts.
I wouldn't read too much into that when discussing a GitHub repo. It really will depend on how the user is using Claude and their willingness to demonstrate which parts they contributed themselves. You need to remember that copyright extends to plays and other works of performance. Everything the copyright office is saying in your linked ruling suggests that an AI-implementation of a human-design is copyrightable.
Yes, but the point is that the AI output could still be covered by the definitely-human copyright in the prompt, just not a new copyright in the output.
For example, machine-translating a book doesn't create a new copyright in the new translation, but that new translation would still inherit the copyright in the original book.
Can you? My understanding is that AI cannot claim copyright and my assumption would be that copyright law immediately extends authorship to the user operating the AI (or their employer).
AI output can't be copyrighted, copyright applies to human creations.
Substantive transformation of AI output via human creativity can be copyrighted, but if you're sticking to Claude commits, that's AI output.
So you're suggesting that an AI translation of, say, a novel removes human authorship from the result? Unless a human goes in and makes further "substantive transformations" to the AI generated work?
And if that's not what you are saying then how are you determining that prompts to and AI are not copyrighted by the author of the prompt? The results are nothing more than a derivative work of the prompt. So you are faced with having to determine whether the prompts themselves or in combination are copyrightable. Depending on the prompt they may or may not be, but you can't apply a blanket rule here.
(Notwithstanding that Claude inserts itself explicitly as co-author and the author is listed on the commit as well)
https://newsroom.loc.gov/news/copyright-office-releases-part...
> The Copyright Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology, as they have applied to technological innovations in the past. It concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts.
People have tried over and over again to register copyright of AI output they supplied the prompts for, for example, in one instance[1], someone prompted AI with over 600+ cumulative iterations of prompting to arrive at the final product, and it wasn't accepted by the Copyright Office.
[1] https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/...
> In March 2023, the Office provided public guidance on registration of works created by a generative-AI system. The guidance explained that, in considering an application for registration, the Office will ask “whether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.”
You are going to have to prove that things Claude stamps as co-authored are not the work of an "assisting instrument". It's certainly true that some vibe-coded one-shot thing might not apply.
I would also note that the applicant applying for copyright in your linked case explicitly refused guidance and advice from the examiner. That could well be because the creation of that specific work was not shaped much by that artist's efforts.
I wouldn't read too much into that when discussing a GitHub repo. It really will depend on how the user is using Claude and their willingness to demonstrate which parts they contributed themselves. You need to remember that copyright extends to plays and other works of performance. Everything the copyright office is saying in your linked ruling suggests that an AI-implementation of a human-design is copyrightable.
Yes, but the point is that the AI output could still be covered by the definitely-human copyright in the prompt, just not a new copyright in the output.
For example, machine-translating a book doesn't create a new copyright in the new translation, but that new translation would still inherit the copyright in the original book.
I don't think parent suggests anything. They are just reiterating how the US decides on copyright matters when it comes to AI generated content.