News + Member Exhibits
by Marilyn Lowney Johnson, NAWAPA
The Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts sponsored “AI for Artists: An Update from the Copyright Office,” a program to alert artists to the issues posed by the rise of Artificial Intelligence (”AI”). Attendees were given many resources to obtain additional information. (Editor’s Note: NAWA has recently implemented new guidelines for exhibition entries. Be sure to review the policy if your work involves AI).
The speaker fielded a number of questions, including: Why would you register your art with the Copyright Office, knowing that registration is voluntary? If you decide to register, how would you do that? What is the most important thing to show if you want to obtain a copyright? Is there a threshold that makes something AI-generated? Can you copyright something only AI-generated? A synopsis of the answers is below.
Why: Register your work to protect it from being copied or used without your permission. Registration is required to enforce this protection in Federal court. Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, download massive amounts of data for training purposes. Downloads might include your work.
How: Visit the US Copyright Office website and look at their Copyright Registration Toolkit. There is a fee to register a copyright. The US Copyright Office website offers many publications to help artists understand how AI can both assist and hinder them. https://www.copyright.gov › intellectual-property-toolkits › copyright-registration-toolkit.pdf
Important to know: To obtain a copyright, you must demonstrate that the work is an independent creation requiring human authorship, not copied from a source and modified, and that is has been fixed (meaning- it has been recorded in some manner). Ideas cannot be copyrighted.
AI versus human intelligence: There is no threshold or bright line between an independent creation and an AI-generated work. For example, if you like a seascape picture on the internet and change the color of the sky from sunset to solid blue, this is not adequate human authorship.
