Yeah you’re right about the derivative works thing. I glossed over it mostly because that seemed pretty much useless to me in the realm of visual art. But I suppose there are a few scenarios where that ability to get protection is meaningful.

Either way, I can’t see a way that this would have been good for anyone if this guy got what he wanted.

I’m pretty sure that he wanted to go this route so he could have automatic copyright ownership of literally anything people using his AI generator prompted from it. There’s already ways that artists can take AI output and pretty easily make it something that can get copyright protection. It really seems like he was just angling to own by default anything that is generated using his AI.

Eh I think it would have been worse if this guy won. To my knowledge he was trying to get the AI to be considered the author and then himself to be the owner of the copyright via the “work for hire” clause. As I understand it that would have been catastrophic. It would have likely meant that anything users prompt from these generators would automatically be the copyright of the people running the AI.

The process you describe could likely still be protected under this ruling since there’s human involvement in the selection of output to use and the altering of it afterward to fit whatever creative vision the person had. If this had won a person doing that it seems would at best be making a derivative work and still not be able to protect it.

The way I understand it if you did that and tried to take just the raw AI output and get a copyright on it you couldn’t based on this ruling. But if it was one of the tools you used to create a piece of art even if it was just editing and making small changes to it to suit your creative vision based on what the AI put out then you could. It sounds like the judge is mainly talking about works solely generated by AI.

Also my understanding was that this guy was trying to get the AI generator itself to be considered the author for the things it generated for the purposes of copyright. Which would theoretically transfer to whatever entity is running the AI because of the “Work for Hire” clause.