Ehhhh. This isn’t as exciting as you might think for, say, graphics. It’s predicated on the fact that in the case, there’s no human involvement.

Howell found that “courts have uniformly declined to recognize copyright in works created absent any human involvement,” citing cases where copyright protection was denied for celestial beings, a cultivated garden, and a monkey who took a selfie.

“Undoubtedly, we are approaching new frontiers in copyright as artists put AI in their toolbox to be used in the generation of new visual and other artistic works,” the judge wrote.

The rise of generative AI will “prompt challenging questions” about how much human input into an AI program is necessary to qualify for copyright protection, Howell said, as well as how to assess the originality of AI-generated art that comes from systems trained on existing copyrighted works.

But this case “is not nearly so complex” because Thaler admitted in his application that he played no role in creating the work, Howell said.

They’re just gonna nail down the line judicially on how much human involvement is required and then they’ll have a human do that much.

I mean, AI tools are gonna be just increasingly incorporated into tools for humans to use.

It might be significant for something like chatbot output, though.