Hello,
If we use the poems that we have written to artificial intelligence with GPT in our poetry book, will it cause any copyright problems?
Does anyone know who can help me with this question?
A lawyer would say this isnāt settled law. And the law concerning AI-generated products is also shaping up differently in different countries.
And I am not a lawyer, and this isnāt legal advice, but I think this question will shake out in this way.
Question 1: Can you use GPT, which trained on some copywritten material, to produce material for your book?
A: Yes, but the output has to obey fair use ā any copywritten quotes need to be short, built into a larger original work, and this work cannot undermine the market value of the original copywritten material. For poetry, this isnāt a problem as long as your work is original ā GPT only spits out short snippets of things, even when the prompt is of a famous poem.
There are cases where AI-generated output violates fair use. For instance, many people are using illustrator Greg Rutkowski as a prompt for Stable Diffusionās AI generated art. Now, if you search for Mr. Rutkowskiās work on the web, you will find these knock offs AI generated art creations, but which bury Mr. Rutkowskiās work. This AI-based usage degrades the market value of his work, so violates fair use. Mr. Rutkowski needs a way of opting out from the model. (Mind you, other lesser know artists might want to opt in in order to create a buzz, so thereās no one-size-fits-all on this).
Please see: [This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And heās not happy about it. | MIT Technology Review](https://Technology Review - This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And heās not happy about it.)
Question 2: Having generated a book of poetry using AI, can I copyright it?
Again unsettled, but IMO that will depends on how much uniqueness you added to the process. If you just entered a prompt, āHey, write me a poem that begins āIn the first blue hours we dance with words.āā then no. You arenāt adding anything original, so your effort canāt be copywritten. If you created an elaborate fine-tuned model that produces startlingly new subtle rhyme schemes and metaphors, then you will be able to copywrite the model, and perhaps the output.
I liked this Verge article, which does a better job that I have on the subtleties and considerations:
[The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next - The Verge](https://The Verge - The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next)
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their license is open and they say that user generated data is the property of the user so long as it abides by their policies of not being lewd, etc.
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Thatās a great point, and very helpful to note. As you say, the OpenAI Terms of Use assigns to the user all of OpenAIās right, title and interest in your output.
However, OpenAI canāt give you a copyright on the output. The US Copyright Office can, and seems it likely will if in creating the output you had a high degree of involvement (e.g. you spent months crafting a model or prompts, that is, you didnāt just type āHey write me a poem in the style of e.e. cummingsā).
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I would also question how anyone would know an AI is involved in any work generated unless you told them, that some faux pas occurred that was a signature of the AI itself, or that there was some kind of watermark involved. But yes, you are right. With Midjourney or Dall-E its pretty obvious by the pictures themselves, but when it comes to these linguistic models it would be incredibly difficult to figure out that a human did not write it.
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Yes I guess so or you can try other options
Have a great day
Many people would argue that itās quite simple to see if something was written by GPT in most cases. One of the pleasures of being a native english speaker is the ability to completely butcher parts of it and still making sense to others without too much discomfort. There are crumbs of our personality that manage to find their way from our thought to our letters.
In fact, Iād argue itās easier to spot AI written material opposed to Dall-E - which uses GPT.
I believe weāll see lots of copyright issues, and it will be interesting to see. Ultimately I could see it coming down to the prompt. If one is selling art made with completely fair, unique prompting and editing, great, thatās hard unique work still.
If someone prompts āepic galaxy John Berkeyā and then publishes it, as @SteveS mentioned, it drowns out John Berkeyās actual art. Thatās a serious issue that would most likely financially degrade his artwork. Not even commercializing it, this could be a fighting case for court.