This is excellent, a future where you could use algorithms to generate works of art and profit massively by selling them would be even worse for artists than today's art/entertainment world.
Unfortunately it's not clear to me whether this is a ruling that a work created using an algorithm can't be copyrighted (which would be ideal) or if it's just about not listing the algorithm as the "author", which is so obvious it's incredible someone actually spent money trying to litigate it.
In the future, media will move faster than copyright. I imagine telling a machine, "make me a new Star Wars film, but with dragons", and out streams the result.
The future isn't going to fit our existing laws or paradigms very well. The laws were written for a different time with totally different expectations.
> In the future, media will move faster than copyright. I imagine telling a machine, "make me a new Star Wars film, but with dragons", and out streams the result.
That sounds like a dystopia of stagnation and solipsism. Imagine each person becoming a super-fan their own Marvel Cinematic Universe™ that's both utterly derivative and incapable of being a point of connection with others.
Take a look at TikTok and YouTube. There are so many people creating content for others.
I've no doubt that people will do exactly what you claim and become more absorbed in themselves, but I think the positive use and upside are vastly going to outweigh the gloomy narrative you've laid out.
This technology is going to bring about an artistic Renaissance and people will have more ways to express themselves and employ themselves and do the things that they want with their lives.
>>> In the future, media will move faster than copyright. I imagine telling a machine, "make me a new Star Wars film, but with dragons", and out streams the result.
>> That sounds like a dystopia of stagnation and solipsism. Imagine each person becoming a super-fan their own Marvel Cinematic Universe™ that's both utterly derivative and incapable of being a point of connection with others.
> Take a look at TikTok and YouTube. There are so many people creating content for others.
But those people are creating "content" themselves, they're not asking a competent machine to do it entirely for them. That's such a big difference that they're not even remotely the same kind of activity.
> This technology is going to bring about an artistic Renaissance and people will have more ways to express themselves and employ themselves and do the things that they want with their lives.
You seem to be talking about something entirely different than what you wrote about in your original comment. That comment described the machine doing the expressing, on demand, with minimal user input.
> That comment described the machine doing the expressing, on demand, with minimal user input.
I only gave the machine two inputs. I don't think I'd stop there. I might in fact spend a lot of time with such a technology exploring all of the nooks and crannies of creation space.
We're not going to arrive at the "tell the computer what" fully declarative tech immediately. There's a path from here to there that still requires human involvement, just less of it spent on the mundane minutiae. Once we reach that point, we won't rest on our laurels.
Just as someone might tweak the directed graph of a plot and serialize it to text today, I'd expect them to have their hands in the "less hands on" systems of the future too. They just won't be drafting and editing prose. That'll be old school.
Yeah. With the pie in the sky being, "make me star wars but with dragons and double check all copyright infringement cases involving star wars to make sure the end result is unlikely to infringe."
Edit. Or heck if the input parameters are really as easy as "star wars and dragons" then you just distribute the generator and the input params.
Except the very idea of a "franchise" will also come under attack when computers can develop narrative, character development, plot devices, world build, etc.
Nobody will want Star Wars when a computer can make Galaxy Dragons and turn it into an epic 100 episode saga. Like your Count Dooku memes? Wait until you hear about Lord Drago Starstream.
And if the concept of a computer developing all of this still seems as far off as "Level 5 autonomous driving", note that with media there will be lots of intermediate steps with humans still in the loop. Just give humans knobs and dials and a "reset" button. Plot the story on a graph, drag the nodes. Nobody dies with this. Human editors can control for quality. There's plenty of automation opportunity until computers become outright storytellers.
I've been hoping for exactly what you're describing for several years now.
Personally I want Xenomorph protagonist remake genre. Basically a genre where you take a movie and remake it with the protagonist being a xenomorph that the rest of the cast is only vaguely aware of as being a xenomorph.
So xenomorph renegade police detective movie where the detective is a xenomorph who gets kicked off the case, slams his badge onto the cheifs desk, skitters into a vent, and then proceeds to eat the bad guys. All while the other policemen comment about how xenomorph cop is reckless and plays by his own rules.
I love it! I'd totally watch that. (Kindergarten Cop with Xenomorphs? Heck yeah!)
This is my dream too. I'm working on it right now!
It's not perfect at the outset, but I've got a 10 year plan to make every step functional, increasingly monetizable, increasingly professional, and will work my way up the capability ladder one rung at a time.
I'd love to hear from other engineers interested in media, storytelling, graphics, etc. (My email is in my profile.)
It's neither of those. The copyright office is simply refusing to make a judgement about whether anyone actually believes their AI is a sentient being. Not only is that not their expertise, it is not something they have to decide under copyright law.
The law is simple, if a human wasn't involved in creating the work, then it's ineligible. Bear in mind, a human pressing a single button on a camera does count as human generated work, because it plainly is.
The TL;DR from the copyright office is basically:
"Did that fancy tool really make that work all by itself?... or did you use a really fancy tool?"
Unfortunately it's not clear to me whether this is a ruling that a work created using an algorithm can't be copyrighted (which would be ideal) or if it's just about not listing the algorithm as the "author", which is so obvious it's incredible someone actually spent money trying to litigate it.