> [T]he Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.
This is a clash between the marketing BS that is contemporary "AI" and reality. "AI" is either sentient, or it's a human tool. The copyright office is requiring that people cut the BS and concede that just because you have particularly complicated tool, doesn't mean it's not just a tool.
It's like someone attempting to register a book copyright to a typewriter, the Copyright Office rolling their eyes, and responding: "Well, smart ass, if the typewriter wrote it, then it's ineligible."
The phrase "requires 'human authorship'" suggests that a human must have authored the submission. In reality, AI could author the submission but a human would need to use their own name when submitting it.
A "machine generated work" is not considered copyrightable: "The Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author. The crucial question is “whether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine."
Yes exactly… I think the idea is that "author" as a verb can have multiple word senses, one of which, the one in the sense of acting as the author-on-paper, would be in play here. And likewise "authorship" can have multiple senses, again in this case authorship-on-paper being the one in play.
Of course one could ask, if this is allowed, what's to stop humans from claiming authorship for the work of other humans? I'd argue this already exists, in the form of ghostwriting, as just one example. Not saying it's good or bad — it depends not the particulars of each case — just saying, as an elaboration on all this, that the system already allows for it.
AIs cannot yet author anything as they still require humans to execute the programs.
AI software is just another tool. The human using it is still the creator of the work. Claiming otherwise is hype; we do not assign agency to software.
It's more that the owner needs to be a person, and software isn't one. But a corporation can register a copyright, because corporations are legal people, even though a human or humans created the work.
It is not simply "you need to pick someone or some company". If the work was legitimately not created by a human, it is ineligible for copyright. This is an important distinction.
For example, you can't register a copyright for a naturally weathered rock in nature, and just say that it's a sculpture and I want to assign copyright to someone or some company.
Now, if you put the rock there, to let it be weathered, then you can copyright it. The distinction is that a human was involved in the creation, not that you "picked" a human.
Likewise, only books written in secluded unpaid conditions count as legitimate writing. If a publication house is required to green-light or edit the project, it's obviously not real writing.
