it really isn't, you actually have to provide enough relevant commentary for it to be transformative

it just looks like that because

- not every claim leads to a take down, more common is that the advertisement revenue is redirected to the owner of the original video. That is very very common, especially on YT, but not really visible as viewer.

- there are enough copyright holders which overall tolerate reactions, even if they don't fall under fair use.

- Sometimes people claim it doesn't fall under fair use when they don't like how the reaction is done, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be ruled fair uses if it came in front of court.

- Sometimes people reacting have explicit permission from the original author to do so, no matter if it counts as fair use or not.

and maybe most relevant here, pretty much all large platforms have a tendency to favor the person claiming the copyright violation over the person which reacted to it. To a point there is is sometimes a big problem if systematically abused with false claims.

Everything else in the entire system is just bits of monster and building falling randomly. We know if we put the whole population under strict scrutiny ("laser eyes" + "lightning wings"), it would kill every last one of them; every teenager is theoretically criminally liable for the GDP of the Milky Way, a series of violations beginning with a performance of The Birthday Song at their first cake day. Even hiring the cheapest defense lawyer would bankrupt nearly any family in the nation. So we try imperfectly to dodge copyright, hopefully by a couple zip codes, and live in a state of nature on the ground.

In reality, it is way more complex and less clear-cut. Which makes sense, because oversimplifying it will lead to silly-sounding conclusions and an almost entirely incorrect understanding of how this works.

For those who don’t want to read the actual full explanation (which is a totally normal position, as the explanation is going fairly into the weeds), I will just a put a TLDR summary at the end. I suggest everyone to check out that summary first, and then come back here if there is interest in a more detailed explanation.

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First, we gotta settle on 3 key concepts (among many) the US copyright law relies on.

1. Human authorship - self-explanatory; you cannot assign authorship to a fish or your smartphone.

2. Original/minimal creativity - some creative choices, not just "I pressed the button."

3. Fixation - the content needs to be recorded on a tangible medium; you cannot copyright a "mood" or a thought, since those aren’t tangible media.

Now onto your hypothetical scenarios:

1) "Initialize an algorithm to point your camera at the street and write those bytes to disk and you are the author of a perpetual stream of data."

Writing bytes to disk satisfies fixation, but it doesn’t automatically make you the author of a copyrightable work. You gotta satisfy the minimum creativity requirement too (e.g., camera positioning, setup, any other creative choices/actions, etc.). Otherwise you are just running a fully automated security cam feed with zero human input, and those videos aren’t easily copyrightable (if at all). You might own copyright in a video work if there’s sufficient human creative authorship - but mere automated recording doesn’t guarantee that.

2) "Initialize an algorithm to point your camera at the street and describe those bytes in words and you are no longer the author a perpetual stream of data."

This is just close to being plainly incorrect. If you (a human) write a textual description, that text is typically copyrightable as a literary work (assuming it’s not purely mechanical like "frame 1: car, frame 2: another car, etc." with no expressive choices). Creating a description doesn’t erase any copyright you may or may not have had in the underlying recording. They’re just different works (audiovisual work vs. text work).

Important to note: neither makes you the author or owner of the underlying "data" of reality, because copyright protects expression, not the underlying facts.

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TLDR:

* Recording the street can produce a copyrightable work if there is human authorship and minimal creativity in how the recording is made. Pure automated capture may fail that.

* Describing the street in words is usually a separate, independently copyrightable work (e.g., a text or audio version of those words), but it doesn’t change the status of the underlying recording.

like most things copyright there is a gray area there

but in most cases it's either pretty clear and courts would most likely rule in your (copyright holder) if you somehow manage to hit the perfect middle of the gray area

through if you tell the court "the author is my AI" (like in this case), the outcome is pretty obvious

also for better understanding using AI doesn't erase copyright, it just doesn't add it. So if you image was copyrightable before you used an AI tool to change it will stay copyrightable (as long as the original image is still in there to a reasonable degree).

So if you start with something you truly made, it would be difficult to use so much context aware fill to negate that.

If you start with something AI generated,at what point does it become copywritable? This is less clear.

But that's fine, because the decision does not torpedo anyone's existing Photoshop workflows.

This also raises the meta question: how much does an image need to change to acquire a new copyright? For example, if you change the Last Supper to include two fat Jesuses on either side of the single skinny Jesus, is that enough?

Personally I hope it's not. To me, this is the best outcome for AI in general. If we are going to violate everyone's copyright training AIs, then it's only fair you don't get AI protection on the output.

so yes it applies to fully AI-generated code as much as to "AI art".

like with AI assisted art it doesn't apply to AI assisted coding

and yes if everything is fully AI generate there is no copyright anymore, that is by design!

Copyright is there to protect human creativity/time investment. If there is no creativity/time investment, then there is no reason for copyright to exist either. Having still copyright there would mean moving it from a law to protect creative work to a law to protect the privileged few which can afford to just mass generate "everything" with AI. That isn't just very undesirable, it's kinda plain evil, as it would mean screwing over the majority of humanity.

Naturally as mentioned that only applies to full AI products, not to AI assisted products in which case the "human contribution" and thinks resulting from it still have copyright.

I mean, I guess lying is something you could do.

so a AI based transformation of a copyrighted input is as much a potential copyright violation as a non AI based transformation.

It's just that the human transformation can by potentially itself be seen as art, so if you have a license or fair use you now can have copyright on the transformed peace (with some limitations (1)). And if the transformation is done by AI you won't (but the original authors "partial" copyright on the outcome is still there).

(1): Like if you (human) "transform" a peace of art in 1000 different ways each keeping 0.001% of the original you will likely get 1000x copyright. But if you then use this 1000 peaces you have copyright too to regenerate the original you still have full copyright infringement. In general the law doesn't care about your "trickery" trying to bend laws.

What a joke. No, AI is not a brush, it is a slop machine that spits out derivatives of the actual masters. If you go back and forth with a human artist about a commission where you keep nitpicking and wanting adjustments, does that make you the artist? No, it makes you the “ideas guy”

But the pure output of a generative model cannot be copyrighted, regardless of how complex the prompt is (note that the prompt itself could be copyrighted).

Absolute nonsense. A work of art is made of semantic stratification, experience, thought process. A prompt lacks all that. AI art can be a tool, but this sentence is a good reminder that on average it’s worth shit all.

So the true Renaissance artists are the Medicis and the RC church?

> how much creativity and effort

So art is art prompting, or is it creativity and effort? If some toddler spends two hours on a drawing, it's a masterpiece?

> AI can be used as another kind of brush.

A simile does not a truth make.

Sorry, but... cringe. If we are calling prompts "masterpieces" now - letting alone the image generated by it - maybe we don't deserve art at all.