Today's conceptual AI experiment: who owns the copyright to these images? And, a different question: who created them? I had six different AI generators tackle the text of e. e. cumming's beautiful but complicated poem "A Man Who Had Fallen Among Thieves" which is itself based on a parable from the New Testament.
(long-winded explanation follows, skip if you like)
The works of e. e. cummings fell into public domain last year, so there is no copyright on the original poem. The copyright on AI-generated works is still being worked out, but it's generally recognized that if a human being starts a non-human process in motion that results in a creative work, that human being holds the copyright on the result. In other words, if you input some text into an AI art generator, you set the process in motion and you hold the copyright on the final image. This makes a sort of sense; if you throw a bucket of paint on a canvas, you had no control over the physical processes that resulted in the final image, but we generally recognize that you are responsible for the result.
But these AI art generators are not random processes, they are "taught" using the works of human artists. Again, this isn't really a problem. All artists learn from studying other artists, and incorporate styles and techniques they've learned. Nevertheless, the artists that the AI learned from have some hand in the final product here. Similarly, you can't critique "A Man Who Had Fallen Among Thieves" without talking about the biblical parable from which it borrows its story, and many of its words.
I was the one who copy-pasted the text of the poem and entered it into the AI. I pushed the button to start the process. Do I own the copyright on these images? Did I create them? They would not exist if I hadn't done that. I had a concept, an idea, and I used a tool to bring that idea into existence. But I also did the least work of anyone involved in the process. Of course, in large studios under the supervision of artists like Damien Hirst, very little of the work but all of the glory goes to the person generating the ideas and giving the orders.
All those questions aside, I think these images are very captivating and interesting. Many of the results evoke the same feeling for me that the poem does. Regardless of who really made the images, I think they're worth looking at.
a man who had fallen among thieves
lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat
fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin
whereon a dozen staunch and leal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because
swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did not care to rise
one hand did nothing on the vest
its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt
while the mute trouserfly
confessed a button solemnly inert.
Brushing from whom the stiffened puke
i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars.
