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We Asked A.I. to Create the Joker. It Generated a Copyrighted Image.
(www.nytimes.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Much like @Ross_audio, I have studied this intently for business reasons. They are absolutely right. This is not a transformative work. This is a direct copy of a trademarked and/or copyrighted character for the purpose of generating revenue. That's simply not legal for the same reason that you can't draw and sell your own Spider-Man comics about a teenager that gains the proportional strength and abilities of a spider, but you can sell your own Grasshopper-Man comics about a teenager that gains the proportional strength and abilities of a grasshopper. As long as you use your own designs and artwork. Because then it is transformative. And parody. Both are legal. What Midjourney is doing is neither transformative nor parody.
Yeah it would not be strange to me if that's how it works in the states, but I think drawing something (not selling, the example was not monetary) does not have international reach
Midjourney Inc. is in San Francisco, so U.S. law is what applies here.
The example is someone drawing copyright for learning and not selling it