They also mention in the same document that were LLMs to more closely approximate deterministic tools, they would be open to reevaluating. That is Requesting X gets X without substantial wiggle room.
I dont think that last part has been tested with an extremely large set of prompts and human generated input to create a more deterministic output. Even outside of code, where you see large prompts, creative writing LLM tools, NovelAI or Sudowrite for instance can have pages and pages of spec for the LLM, sometimes close to 50% of the size of the final output.
Then there's testing, review etc, human processes confirming that the output meets spec, updating it where needed intelligently.
There are also foreign courts, with similar rules about human intention, that have found in favor of prompts only, where it could be demonstrated that multiple rounds of prompts were used to refine the image.
I wouldnt call this settled at all tbh. And to be honest, a lot of this doesnt require exposure. you dont need to own up to LLM use in a lot of settings, proving LLM use is so difficult its easy to jump up the ladder from LLM (100%) to LLM (50%) and ultimately claim ownership.
The people who will get busted for this are basically just super lazy leaving ChatGPT responses in, failing to pay an editor, failing to modify images for anything more than layouts.
Temperature 0 determinism is subject to active research. NVIDIA tried but failed so far, DeepSeek V4 seems to have done it. I hope judges won't be swayed by this an AI generated code will classified as uncopyrightable, just like Images are.
It'd be a form of plagiarism, just with different consequences to the most common form.
Copyright Office requires you to disclose AI involvement and disclaim the AI-generated parts. Zarya of the Dawn is the example — applicant filed for the whole graphic novel, got partial registration on the human-written text, refused on the Midjourney images. The reproducibility of the prompt isn't really the test. The test is whether a human made the expressive choices.
LLMs are amazing of course and we use them heavily ourselves - but not for modifying text that is to be posted to HN. Doing so leaves imprints on the language that readers are increasingly becoming allergic to, and we want HN to be a place human conversation.
Not really. Copyright registration is pretty much automatic. The Copyright Office does not check for duplicates. Patent registration involves actual examination for patentability. Issued patents are presumed valid (less so than they used to be), but issued copyrights are not. You have to litigate.
The US does not have "sweat of the brow" copyrights. It's the "spark" that creates the originality, not the work. Which is why you can't copyright a telephone directory (Feist vs. Rural Telephone) or a copy of an uncopyrighted image (Bridgeman vs. Corel) or a scan of a 3D object (Meshwerks vs. Toyota). Or the contents of a database as a collective work. Note that some EU countries do allow database copyright.
Interestingly, a corporation can be an author for copyright purposes. The movie industry pushed for that. We may in time see AI corporate personhood for IP purposes.
It does not have to be substantial transformation.