USCO’s Decision That AI Prompts Aren’t Copyrightable Underscores Tech’s ‘Black Box’ Problem

Director Ivy Clarice Estoesta was quoted in the article “USCO’s Decision That AI Prompts Aren’t Copyrightable Underscores Tech’s ‘Black Box’ Problem,” published by Legaltech News.

Following is an excerpt from the article:

“In fact, for Ivy Estoesta, a director in Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox’s trademark and brand protection practice, the latest rejection is a lesson for all AI users to disclaim AI’s role in your creation to at least secure a partial license over your work.

From the USCO’s perspective, because Midjourney does not understand grammar and sentence structures in the way that humans do, the text prompts cannot be considered as direct instructions for the output. Therefore, Allen could not have assumed with certainty what his text prompt into Midjourney would generate, Estoesta said.

‘So the [USCO] was asking him to disclaim, meaning he could not claim copyright authorship over what the AI itself generated,’ Estoesta said. ‘[But] the author was not willing to disclaim any part that was generated by AI. So I think that maybe if he did, then the board would have gotten to the next question of whether or not his modifications using Photoshop could have been sufficient[ly] creative to qualify for copyright protection.'”