If I own a doughnut machine, I own all the doughnuts it produces. So why shouldn't the same logic apply if I own an AI that auto-generates stories and music? That's the question the authors address in this post. One argument is that "For a work to be protected by copyright, there needs to be creative involvement on the part of an 'author'", that is, "it reflects the 'author's own intellectual creation,' i.e. the expression of the author's personal touch and the result of free and creative choices." That's something neither a machine nor a monkey can do. More to the point, though, the authors argue that copyright serves no purpose in these cases - even if there is a market for Nirvana-esque algorithm-produced music (there is, trust me), "copyright protection of the 'artistic' outputs by an AI system is not the appropriate mechanism to stimulate this development." I find these to be extraordinarily weak arguments, and the proposal that "AI-generated outputs should be in the public domain" to be a risky remedy to the problem being perceived.
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