comment: >
  
  I always assumed it was the commissioner who owned the copyright, like if I have a idea for a character in my head but suck at drawing so I just gave a description for someone to draw for me, wouldn’t I own the copyright to the character I made up?
  Or using your analogy if I commissioned a portrait of my partner, I wouldn’t want the painter making copies of her portrait to sell on the open market.
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  These are some good resources and I will look into them now. In terms of the mickey mouse thing, if the output has elements of something that is protected, then that is infringing and Disney can sue. I am talking about cases where the output does not have direct elements of copying >
  
  ...but that's the argument isn't it? The data the AI was trained on consisted of copyrighted elements. So is it more akin to an artist taking copyrighted images and putting together a collage for their own copyright, or is it entirely new?
  It's certainly nuanced. I think ultimately judges will rule that anything made via an AI that had copyrighted data in its training will result in the output not being eligible for copyright. >
  
  Intuitively I would argue that is entirely new as opposed to a collage. That is an interesting position in your last sentence. So it would be public domain then? Couple questions in that scenario: 
  
  
  How would they prove whether there was copyrighted data in the training? Some people might not know what a model that comes to them has been trained on in the past. 
  
  
  What would you say to the argument about influence? If I listen to George Carlin's stand up 5000 times and then create a stand up set of my own which is clearly influenced by his work but draws no direct copying, should I be able to copyright my set? >
  
  
  It diesn't matter that there is copyrighted data in the training set. It's covered by fair use. >
  
  As far as I heard, the "fair use" ruling was based on authors suing search engines for displaying copyrighted material (book previews/excerpts). It was ruled fair use because it didn't actually harm the sales, nor was it any real competition. AI art is direct competition at the expense of the artists, so it's substantially different.
  Currently it might fall into the fair use category, but that's more of a technical accident, and there are already lawsuits undergoing trying to change it. >
  
  The judge also ruled that it was transformative. >
  
  Yeah, I think there's no contest that the final result is transformative, and arguing that angle was a mistake (also calling it collage). But there's another angle about the right to include images in the training data in the first place. Copyrights can be very specific about what use cases are allowed, so it might be possible to have a clause that forbids inclusion in AI training sets, but allows use for human learning. >
  
  Don't you think a better analogy would be a commission?
  If I want a portrait painted of my partner for her birthday I can reach out to an artist and commission them. I give them a prompt "please paint a canvas of this woman, interpret her as a renaissance queen" I supply a reference photograph and the painter does their painting.
  I pay them for their work and they ship me the product.
  I own the painting.
  The painter stills owns the copyright to that painting.
  Even though I prompted the painter my involvement ended there.
  It's possible even to credit the photographer that supplied the reference image in the first place, but they wouldn't own copyright to the painting unless it was too artistically similar to the photo. Because it was reinterpreted into renaissance that's a slim chance.