In the United States, the Copyright Office has denied the authorship of a work of art to the author Creativity Machine. As the name suggests Creativity Machine is an artificial intelligence algorithm that made the artificial painting. The reason is that the image created by the AI did not include any element of “human authorship”. Under current US laws, copyright protection systems can only come into play when referring to “intellectual labor” works that are based on the “creative powers of the human mind”.
In other words, there must be the hand of man. The author who has been fighting for his Creativy Machine to recognize the rights of the work since 2019 is actually a human and is called Steven Thaler. The lack of his touch in the work is deliberate because A Recent Entrance to Paradise “which is the name of the work in question is described as a” simulated near-death experience “in the sense that the algorithm reworks images on the afterlife without intervention of those who live in the hereafter, to understand us. Hence the difficulty of the Copyright Office which instead requires human elements.
Paradoxically, the attribution of copyright would have been simpler if Thaler had only used AI for some “pieces” of his work. However, the question is still open. The position of the United States is judged by some jurists to be very clear towards non-humans. But the question is very open and embraces the responsibility of artificial intelligence systems when they make choices that have consequences. Let’s just consider Nefele the virtual influencer (Italian) who on Instagram talks to generation Z about inculusion and diversity. For now he only has 1400 followers but who answers if, for example, he starts to slander other (real) infuencers?