US Copyright Office removes copyright for AI-generated comic book artwork

Enlarge / The cover of "Zarya of the Dawn", a comic created using Midjourney AI image synthesis in 2022. Kris Kashtanova

On Tuesday, the US Copyright Office said that images created using the AI-powered Midjourney image generator for the comic book Zarya of the Dawn< /em> should not have received copyright protection, and the copyright protection of the images will be revoked.

In a letter to author Kris Kashtanova's attorney obtained by Ars Technica, the office cites "incomplete information" in the original copyright registration as the reason it is considering revoking the original recording and to issue a new one excluding the protection of AI-generated images. Instead, the new registration will only cover the text of the work and the arrangement of images and text. Originally, Kashtanova did not reveal that the images were created by an AI model.

“We find that Ms. Kashtanova is the author of the text of the Work and of the selection, coordination and arrangement of the written and visual elements of the Work,” reads the letter. of copyright. "This authorship is copyrighted. However, as noted below, the images of the Work that have been generated by Midjourney technology are not the product of human authorship."

Last September, in a story that first appeared on Ars Technica, Kashtanova publicly announced that Zarya of the Dawn, which features comic book-style artwork generated from prompts using latent scattering AI process, had been granted copyright registration. At the time, we considered this to be a precedent case for recording artwork created by latent diffusion.

Enlarge / An excerpt from the AI-assisted comic book Zarya of the Dawn, which originally received a United States copyright registration in September, now revised. Kris Kashtanova

However, as the letter explains, after the Copyright Office learned that the work included AI-generated imagery via Kashtanova's social media posts, it issued a notice to Kashtanova in October stating that he intended to cancel the registration unless she provided additional information as to why the registration should not be canceled. Kashtanova's attorney responded to the letter in November with an argument that Kashtanova was the author of all aspects of the work, with Midjourney merely serving as a support tool.

This argument was not enough for the Copyright Office, which describes in detail why it believes AI-generated artwork should not enjoy copyright protection. In a key excerpt provided below, the Bureau emphasizes the machine-generated origins of images:

Based on the record before it, the Bureau concludes that the Midjourney-generated images contained in the Work are not original works of authorship protected by copyright. See COMPENDIUM (THIRD) § 313.2 (explaining that "the Office will not register works produced by machine or sea...