AI Works Cannot be Copyright. So, How Are Human Created Works Being Taken Down For Infringement Claims by AI Services?

Today, I opened up YouTube on my phone over breakfast and was presented with this video. Feel free to watch it, I'll wait...

Now, I follow media law a little, I used to be one of the production team in two of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's capital city newsrooms. I handled audio technical production alongside the bulletin producer (a journalist) for ABC Radio's main bulletins on the hour in the two cities I worked this gig. Although I wasn't a journalist, I was frequently included in editorial discussions surrounding stories because the understanding that editorial policy was a requirement for my technical oversight of audios edits and live crosses. I learned a good smattering of broadcasting and copyright law in my 27 years with "Aunty." The standout takeaway, relevant to this topic - only a human can hold copyrights. A dog can't, a monkey or an ape can't. A computer system, sure as shit, can't hold copyright. As per Arts Law Australia (paragraph 5)...

Copyright law only recognises humans as authors (or performers) and only human authors (or performers) are given moral rights. One of these rights is a right to be attributed as an author of the work. For more information, see Arts Law’s Information Sheet on Moral Rights.

When a work is generated with the help of AI, human authors who contributed ‘independent intellectual effort’ to the creation of the work should be credited as authors. A person who did not contribute a substantial effort in the generation of the work is not entitled to be credited as an author.

AI does not have any rights under copyright law and therefore there is no legal obligation to indicate that AI was used to generate the work. But you might still want to indicate that AI was used to help create a work to be transparent with your audience. “Transparency and explainability” is one of “Australia’s AI Ethics Principles” developed by the Australian Government as part of ‘Australia’s Artificial Intelligence Ethics Framework’. These principles are not legally binding, but helpful guidance on best practice when working with AI. You can read more about them here.

This is pretty universal across most jurisdictions, allowing of course for different wording and court interpretation, from nation to nation. A machine cannot own a work. One of those above-mentioned primates or canines has a better chance of holding rights to their own creative output!

Google's own AI agrees. Searching for AI rights law, Google gave me this AI generated excerpt...

...works solely created by artificial intelligence (AI) are not eligible for copyright protection... ..because AI tools do not have legal status. This is because copyright material can only be "authored" by humans, and only human authors have the right to be attributed as authors.

However, if a human contributes enough "independent intellectual effort" to a work, then it may be eligible for copyright protection. In this case, the human author would be entitled to full moral and commercial rights, including acknowledgement.

Here are some other considerations regarding AI-generated works and copyright: Attribution
It's good practice to acknowledge the use of an AI system to generate a work.

Compliance
There are no specific exceptions in Australian copyright legislation for data mining or the use of works for machine learning.

International approaches
There are differing approaches internationally, and some degree of harmonization may be required in the future.

Liability
Both the AI user and the AI company could potentially be liable if generative AI outputs infringe copyrights in existing works.

So, for Google's copyright protection system to action a copyright claim on an AI generated derivative of an artist's original work, is at best a shitfucked tort, but most likely, the ignorant carelessness of a faceless leviathan (google/youtube) just mechanically rolling over one of its content creators without a human checking one aspect of the grifter's claim. Big money doesn't care about the workers or small business operators, they never have.

So, on top of carbon emissions, water depletion (yes, that's the latest environmental cost of AI data centres, water for keeping the servers and server rooms cool) and now blatent copyrights power abuses... the venture capitalists are taking the piss... or are they stealing everything? Sort of semi legally, by specious claims that nobody working in the arts has the money to fight!

So, maybe AI isn't just a way for billionaires to fire more people and drive down wages. It's a way for Elon and Jeff, Richard, et al, to "legally" own all the culture and take it to Mars with them when they rocket off to space, leaving a few dying humans expiring on a barren rock that once gave life. Hmm, I hyperbolise, I'll admit, but I'm beginning to suspect the venture capital sector are trying to lock up all culture, all creativity as product they own exclusively. Like the Nazis sacking the great museums of Europe as WWII ended.

I have skin in this game on the arts sector side. While I no longer perform live, I do create. I've broadened my creativity from music, to microcontroller firmware for musical arts, to the odd painting. I have ideas that I retain a moral right in, in law, yet share willingly with the wider community. I share it because, while I may own the rights that govern representation of my works in public, I also believe the viewing and use of culture which arises from ideas is the right of everybody. Culture is just junk if it's locked away. Without the light of public spectacle, art withers like a corpse in the desert. The artist should be paid for it, absolutely! But for industry to be the self appointed arbiter of what is mine, or what is Venus Theory's, that which is Mary Spender's - that is fascism. That is the theft of culture, directly from the "easels" of the original creators.

When Frank Herbert wrote "Dune," his vision was majestic, his world building epic. I always saw his critique of the West's exploitation of the developing world for resources in the Imperial/colonial landscape of Great Houses of the Galactic Empire. I'm now also beginning to fully understand why he also created a civilisation where computers were outlawed under literal pain of death. The prohibition against "Machines that can think," which arose out of the "Butlerian Jihad."

Powerful entities, armed with literally more money than all the gods, having machines which can copy for the purposes of stealing art, even from the hearts of artists themselves? Frank Herbert was a visionary, if I believed in things occult, I'd say "a seer!" We must smash the "machines that think." Not necessarily the personal workstations - they don't think, they simply follow complex, yet totally rigid flow charts - but any machine that seeks to emulate the human mind is a threat to humanity, culture and creativity. the world is a better place for spreadsheets, digital audio workstations, computer aided design software and ink/paint tools, like Blendr. AI, though, any AI, is a threat to our very humanity. And big money knows that, they are the only people who will truly benefit from AI, by using it to copy, appropriate and shut down all great human work. Because AI is the key to the few owning everything and the many owning nothing... if the many even remain after the onslaught of venture capital powered by AI. The future is not bright anymore, an eclipse is rising. I think we've already reached the "gray goo" hypothesis, culturally, at the very least.

Further Reading

AI has an Intelectual Property Problem - Harvard Business Review

Artificial intelligence and copyright - World Intellectual Property Organisation