Are generative ai tools human? 🤖 Not according to the United States Copyright Office! So, if you’re using #Midjourney to create work, you need to understand that you’re probably creating a work that will not receive any IP protection. #repost @kris.kashtanova #iplaw #copyright #ai #chatgpt

Turns out when the copyright office finds out that the images were created on a tool called Midjourney, they come back and say to her, we give copyright protection to anything that is original, fixed to a tangible medium, and has human authorship. I've been studying this stuff for a very long time. And human authorship, it is a requirement, but it's not one that we discuss very often. And they say to Chris Cashtenova, we will give you protection over your story, but we are not gonna give you protection over these images that are in your comic book. And so, for those people listening to me right now, they might be like, okay, this sounds like a dramatic moment. What's the big deal about that? If you can't get a copyright registration, that's a big problem. Because there was a case a few years ago that says, you no longer have access to the federal courts to stop someone from infringing on your intellectual property unless you have a copyright registration. So now, creators who are using Midjourney and Dolly 2, you now have no right to stop other people from making the exact same work. And if you take it a step further, you creator making this amazing piece of work that you have dreams of licensing to some of my clients, maybe like an LVMH, you're gonna be out of luck. Because nobody is going to license a work that has no chance of actually having protectable rights under the Copyright Act.