Allen had argued that he revised his prompts over 600 times and edited the AI-generated image with Photoshop, but his appeal was denied. He believes this decision will create new problems for the copyright office. This case marks a significant moment in the legal status of AI-generated art.
Key takeaways:
- Jason Allen, who won the Colorado State Fair's fine art competition with an AI-generated painting, has been denied copyright protection for his work by the US Copyright Office.
- The Office stated that the artwork contained "more than a de minimis amount of content generated by artificial intelligence," and because Allen was unwilling to disclaim the AI-generated material, the work could not be registered as submitted.
- Allen argued that he had to revise his prompts "at least 624 times" to get to the resulting artwork, and had to edit the AI-generated image with Photoshop. He refused to disclaim that he was using the AI image-generating tool Midjourney.
- This decision is seen as a significant moment in the evolving legal status of AI-generated art, potentially impacting those who claim to be original artists for work they generated using AI.