Video game voice actors are fearing that the ability for generative AI to replicate their voices may cost them work and, more fundamentally, control of their own voice.
I think courts in the US are slowly coming to the consensus that AI-generated content is not eligible for copyright. My opinion is that this solves the problem rather perfectly; companies now have an incentive to use humans, because if they use AI to make content then anyone is free to rip off that content, and I think that’s the way it should be.
AI should benefit humanity, and its products should be open and available for everyone, rather than being something for corporations to exploit for their own sole benefit.
So how much human involvement is required for something to become eligible for Copyright? If I’m an artist and I draw a character all by myself, but use AI to fill in the background, would that be eligible? If I’m a software developer and I occasionally let copilot autocomplete a line because it suggested the correct thing, does that mean the entire programm is now impossible to Copyright? Where is the line?
The Copyright Office recently released a webinar on just this point. Basically anything that is creative and human generated is still granted copyright, but the AI generated components are themselves non-copyrightable. In your examples, those components are fairly de minimis (small and insubstantial) and so the overall copyright of the work wouldn’t be impacted.
AI-generated content is not eligible for copyright.
That’s just not true, no matter how often clueless artists repeat that. What’s not copyrightable is completely AI generated simple stuff, like type “car” into StableDiffusion and copyright that image of a car. That’s not eligible for copyright and rightfully so, since that would turn AI generation into a minefield if people could copyright sections of it in bulk. But nobody does that anyway.
People want full books and games and stuff, not singular images of a car. For the time being at least, any full game or book will still be full of human input, it’s not something the AI will spit out without effort. You still need numerous different AI systems, custom training and a whole lot of manual back and forth before you get something to your liking. And the result of all that effort will still be copyrightable.
There might come a day in the not so distance future when AI can do it all by itself and make the whole game or movie from start to finish with no human input. But at that point you aren’t just replacing the actor, you are making Disney obsolete, as you no longer need static content, you can just generate it dynamic on the fly like you are on the Star Trek Holodeck. But at that point the fate of the voice actor will be the least of your problems, as you just made a whole lot of other human jobs obsolete too.
No, this isn’t really correct. The US Copyright Office has released policy that pretty clearly states where the line falls and it’s certainly beyond super simple prompts. In fact, by the reasoning in the policy document, I’d say it’s any time where if the AI were replaced with a human and you’d want a work for hire agreement to assign copyright, then that is likely non-copyrightable subject matter.
I’ll add, how this works with modern AI art flows, still remains to be seen, but I think probably on the side of no copyright. Currently, works use very elaborate prompts, some edits, bashes, and masks in an editor and then img2img and inpainting to really get your work where it needs to be. However, under the current rubric, the sort of nexus of creativity is still happening in the model so unlikely to be granted copyright.
What’s their definition of AI then? Seems like games that feature heavy procedurally generated content (for example) could fit many common definitions, and that is clearly not in the spirit of what they’re trying to do here.
For a lot of procgen content, i believe the individual assets or comprising components are still handcrafted, it’s just the placement of them that is done procedurally. But video game copyright is actually pretty complex (in theory; somewhat in practice, too, but much more answerable) so I’m not sure, assuming a fully genAI set of assets and their placement, how this would pan out. I suppose those components would need to be identified for limitations on the copyright under current filing guidelines, but there is still a whole lot in the game that is protected.
Doesn’t apply to this case. This wasn’t in a commercial product but a fanmade Skyrim mod.
Apart from that, I fully agree. AI is an amazing tool for prototypes and hobby projects that wouldn’t be made at all without it (because honestly, nobody hires artists and voice actors for something only their friends will ever see). Making all AI-generated content public domain seems like a good compromise. Scientists and companies still have an incentive to improve the technology because people still have use cases where it doesn’t matter if someone copies what they generate, hobbyists can play around as much as they want and professionals have another tool in their toolbox to speed up prototyping before they start work on the actual handmade product.
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I think courts in the US are slowly coming to the consensus that AI-generated content is not eligible for copyright. My opinion is that this solves the problem rather perfectly; companies now have an incentive to use humans, because if they use AI to make content then anyone is free to rip off that content, and I think that’s the way it should be.
AI should benefit humanity, and its products should be open and available for everyone, rather than being something for corporations to exploit for their own sole benefit.
So how much human involvement is required for something to become eligible for Copyright? If I’m an artist and I draw a character all by myself, but use AI to fill in the background, would that be eligible? If I’m a software developer and I occasionally let copilot autocomplete a line because it suggested the correct thing, does that mean the entire programm is now impossible to Copyright? Where is the line?
The Copyright Office recently released a webinar on just this point. Basically anything that is creative and human generated is still granted copyright, but the AI generated components are themselves non-copyrightable. In your examples, those components are fairly de minimis (small and insubstantial) and so the overall copyright of the work wouldn’t be impacted.
That’s just not true, no matter how often clueless artists repeat that. What’s not copyrightable is completely AI generated simple stuff, like type “car” into StableDiffusion and copyright that image of a car. That’s not eligible for copyright and rightfully so, since that would turn AI generation into a minefield if people could copyright sections of it in bulk. But nobody does that anyway.
People want full books and games and stuff, not singular images of a car. For the time being at least, any full game or book will still be full of human input, it’s not something the AI will spit out without effort. You still need numerous different AI systems, custom training and a whole lot of manual back and forth before you get something to your liking. And the result of all that effort will still be copyrightable.
There might come a day in the not so distance future when AI can do it all by itself and make the whole game or movie from start to finish with no human input. But at that point you aren’t just replacing the actor, you are making Disney obsolete, as you no longer need static content, you can just generate it dynamic on the fly like you are on the Star Trek Holodeck. But at that point the fate of the voice actor will be the least of your problems, as you just made a whole lot of other human jobs obsolete too.
No, this isn’t really correct. The US Copyright Office has released policy that pretty clearly states where the line falls and it’s certainly beyond super simple prompts. In fact, by the reasoning in the policy document, I’d say it’s any time where if the AI were replaced with a human and you’d want a work for hire agreement to assign copyright, then that is likely non-copyrightable subject matter.
I’ll add, how this works with modern AI art flows, still remains to be seen, but I think probably on the side of no copyright. Currently, works use very elaborate prompts, some edits, bashes, and masks in an editor and then img2img and inpainting to really get your work where it needs to be. However, under the current rubric, the sort of nexus of creativity is still happening in the model so unlikely to be granted copyright.
What’s their definition of AI then? Seems like games that feature heavy procedurally generated content (for example) could fit many common definitions, and that is clearly not in the spirit of what they’re trying to do here.
For a lot of procgen content, i believe the individual assets or comprising components are still handcrafted, it’s just the placement of them that is done procedurally. But video game copyright is actually pretty complex (in theory; somewhat in practice, too, but much more answerable) so I’m not sure, assuming a fully genAI set of assets and their placement, how this would pan out. I suppose those components would need to be identified for limitations on the copyright under current filing guidelines, but there is still a whole lot in the game that is protected.
Doesn’t apply to this case. This wasn’t in a commercial product but a fanmade Skyrim mod.
Apart from that, I fully agree. AI is an amazing tool for prototypes and hobby projects that wouldn’t be made at all without it (because honestly, nobody hires artists and voice actors for something only their friends will ever see). Making all AI-generated content public domain seems like a good compromise. Scientists and companies still have an incentive to improve the technology because people still have use cases where it doesn’t matter if someone copies what they generate, hobbyists can play around as much as they want and professionals have another tool in their toolbox to speed up prototyping before they start work on the actual handmade product.