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Copyright and why it's broken. - Tom Scott
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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Technology
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Right now, it kind of does. Like if you took someone else's work and claimed it as your own: unless they can prove it's theirs, first one to claim it gets to own the copyright.
Unfair? You bet. There's things like SafeCreative that has been running for many years (I used to be part of a precursor to that) or even register it as an NFT to have a proof of precedence.
They can prove it's their by simply showing things like commit logs and creation process. Recreating the work in question. It's fairly hard to lie about that stuff.
First one to claim it doesn't own the copyright. They still have to argue they own the copyright through a series of details. Specially if someone claims it's ai generated.
Current copyright law doesn't require proving anything other than priority of registration/publication.
Someone can clam it's AI all they want, they would have to prove it's AI. Good luck with that (unless they have the exact model, prompt and seed).
LPT: if you want to publish a game on Steam with AI-generated assets... don't tell anyone they're AI-generated, register them to get your copyright, and present that as proof to Steam when asked.
BTW, creation progress and "commit logs", can also be faked.
Current copyright law doesn't require registration or publication in the USA.
Also, no, someone can simply take your assets, you then must sue them in court and thus you are suing them and the onus is on YOU to make your case that you hold the copyright.
If you want to test your assumption you may do so at your convenience. My guess is Steam is just going to tell you that they see your content as AI-generated and that they don't have to sell your product.
Btw, faked creation progress and commit logs are also provable in court but again, it's a risk, and if you want to make that risk. Do so. A lot of game studios aren't going to make that risk just because someone on the internet said they could probably, maybe, get away with it. Video games are multimillion-dollar projects, even for the indie ones, at this point. Betting that you can copyright your game and assets on lying and breaking the law is a risk that most won't take and most people working on that game wouldn't stand by. You might find some but the majority of talent isn't going to.
Precisely: while copyright doesn't require registration or publication to exist, it does require it to prove in court that it exists. Its abstract existence is moot by itself.
If you generate some AI art, and register or publish it as your own, that's the only proof you (currently) need in court to sue anyone who'd copy it.
Regarding Steam, my guess is they're only gonna CYA and ask you for a statement of ownership, so they can throw you under the bus if anyone comes up with proof that you used AI to generate your assets. (One such proof could be publishing a YouTube video boasting how your game uses AI generated art... don't do that).
Game studios are definitely going to publish games with AI art, they'll just "forget" to disclose it was AI generated, and if they get some whistleblower, they'll claim that their copyright is on their transformative use.
If Steam wants to retract all games like that, just wait and see how many will fall.
Some random nft greedy indie studio might publish with ai art and like about it but that's not going to be the norm.
Hey, you just stole my business model! (jk... or am I 🤔)
But seriously, just yesterday I saw a news blurb on TV about a studio making a game with AI-based characters like Einstein, Sagan, and similar, trained on all their published documents and public appearances. As far as I know, the Einstein real estate is a really greedy bunch of folks, charging through the nose for any material related to him... and I have my doubts they got a license for Sagan or the others either.
Just eager to see how that one plays out.
We'll see. Likeness rights are also a thing.