Following the groundbreaking ruling that stirred the community of authors and creators in the United States and worldwide in general, the U.S. Copyright Office has once again denied copyright registration for works generated by the AI application MidJourney. Recently, the U.S. Copyright Office issued a similar ruling, rejecting the copyright application of author Jason M. Allen for artworks synthesized by the AI system MidJourney.
In early February 2023, the U.S. Copyright Office refused to grant copyright registration for the graphic novel created by AI MidJourney, synthesized by author Kris Kashtanova, titled “Zarya of the Dawn.” The Copyright Office stated that the work did not demonstrate the creative input of the author, as it was entirely generated by MidJourney.
This refusal has caused a significant stir among contemporary authors who use AI software to create their works, with Kris being at the forefront of this emerging international trend. Even MidJourney itself has pledged to support Kris and other authors in registering their works.
However, while Kris’s struggle has yet to see new developments, the U.S. Copyright Office has made a similar announcement for the second time.
According to the official statement from the U.S. Copyright Office in early September 2023, the science fiction-themed image “Theater D’opera Spatial” by author Allen was not granted copyright registration because it was not considered a product created by a human author.
Author Allen stated that he was not surprised by the U.S. Copyright Office’s decision, considering the previous developments experienced by author Kris. However, Allen also mentioned that he would not give up and would continue to pursue the case.
It is worth noting that Allen’s work, “Theater D’opera Spatial,” previously won first place in an AI-generated artworks competition at the Colorado State Fair in 2022.
Allen submitted a copyright application for the work “Theater D’opera Spatial” in September of the previous year. In his application to the U.S. Copyright Office, he stated that he had to “input a minimum of 624 edits and commands to obtain the first version of the image” using MidJourney and then made further edits to create the final artwork using Adobe Photoshop.
In this rejection notice, authors and creators of AI-generated works received more detailed information about the U.S. Copyright Office’s reasons for rejection. Specifically, the Copyright Office rejected certain images in Allen’s application because these images had more AI-generated components than human-created elements or were edited by humans.
This means that, to be registered, images need to surpass a certain percentage threshold of human-created components. For example, if the Copyright Office’s acceptance threshold is 50/50, the human-created portion in the artwork must constitute at least 51% to be eligible for registration.
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