Potentially it can be argued that LAION is aiding in copyright infringement, but there is a very strong argument that no copyright infringement is occurring at all. (With one of the many interesting twists being that AI output is considered PD in the US)
My lawyer would say this is a "legally interesting situation": by which he means that the situation legally and ethically very unclear, and lawyers can earn a lot of money sorting it out.
That's not what the court ruled. The particular case had no user input, so failed the creativity test. Even making simple prompts, a creative process, is enough to make the result copyrightable, in the same manner that using AI ni photoshop to teak things results in copyrightable, or using AI filters to adjust audio, or even write text, results in copyrightable content.
The requirement is that a human drive any tool with some creative input, which does not have to be extensive at all. I can write a few words and it;s copyrightetd automatically. How can doing that to create a prompt which drives a tool not be copyrightable? They're both creative content.
> some creative input, which does not have to be extensive at all.
The US copyright office's statement suggests otherwise:
> when an AI technology
receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical
works in response, the “traditional elements of authorship” are determined and executed
by the technology—not the human user. Based on the Office’s understanding of the
generative AI technologies currently available, users do not exercise ultimate creative
control over how such systems interpret prompts and generate material. Instead, these
prompts function more like instructions to a commissioned artist—they identify what the
prompter wishes to have depicted, but the machine determines how those instructions are
implemented in its output.
Obviously one could draw a parallel to someone painting using a spray can - where the individual droplets of ink land are mostly a matter of physics, so there is no creative control there. The human simply directs the can to give the general direction of where the ink should be put.
A line must be drawn between these two cases, but it is unclear where it is.
That does not say they do not grant copyrights to such things, and they explicitly list mixtures of things they did grant copyrights to. The only place they did not grant copyright was the example with no human inputs. In the case I claimed, with human creative input to direct a tool, to quote:
"In the case of works containing AI-generated material, the Office will consider whether the AI contributions are the result of “mechanical reproduction” or instead of an author’s “own original mental conception, to which [the author] gave visible form.” The answer will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work. This is necessarily a case-by-case inquiry."
As I put it, prompt engineering, which is often iterative, directed by a human desiring a goal, will easily surpass the statement. The simple "all AI generated content is not copyrightable" simply isn't true as the OP claimed.
My reading was that the AI generated elements themselves are considered not copyrightable at this time. The additions might be considered copyrightable by themselves.
Did you have eg. a more recent court ruling that overrides this? (you might have been thinking of the monkey selfie case, which predates this). Or do you think I'm misreading?
The link is not a court ruling, nor does it even claim AI generated elements are not copyrighted. It is a guide, not binding, nor court tested, with one goal of getting more public input on how to balance needs. It does say in several places that AI generated content can end up being copyrighted in simple manners - make small changes, curate, select, or arrange.
From that text: "In the case of works containing AI-generated material, the Office will consider whether the AI contributions are the result of “mechanical reproduction” or instead of an author’s “own original mental conception, to which [the author] gave visible form.” The answer will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work. This is necessarily a case-by-case inquiry."
Prompt engineering as iterative, directed, and the output of a human exercising creative control over the work, is most likely going to be copyrighted. Having a tool create lots of items and having a human curate them is usually a copyrighted action (called "copyright of compilation").
The OP simple (and unfortunately incorrect pop assertion) that AI works are not copyrightable is missing the nuance that is reality. And it takes very little editing of a work wholly made from an AI to make it 100% copyrightable, so discounting AI for use in making copyrighted work is missing the nuance.
They very vigorously don’t want to be held responsible for this, but it’s their letters don’t have any specific legal weight.