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+--- Thread: Lawyers flip-out: Photos taken by AI may be in public domain (non-human DIY issues) (/thread-5111.html)
Lawyers flip-out: Photos taken by AI may be in public domain (non-human DIY issues) - C C - Apr 2, 2018
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180325/00424039493/not-everything-needs-copyright-lawyers-flip-out-that-photos-taken-ai-may-be-public-domain.shtml
EXCERPT: You may recall the years we've spent over the ridiculous monkey selfie story, concerning whether or not there was a copyright in a selfie taken by a monkey (there is not) and if there is (again, there is not) whether it's owned by the monkey (absolutely not) or the camera owner (still no). [...] it really appeared that PETA's lawyers [...] had taken on the case to establish some credibility on the issue of non-human-generated works and copyright. There isn't likely to be a rush of animal selfies (though there just was a pretty damn awesome penguin selfie -- no one tell PETA), but there are going to be a whole bunch of questions in the very, very near future concerning copyright and works generated by artificial intelligence. [...]
But now many of these questions are becoming reality, and some lawyers are freaking out. Case in point: an article in Lexology recently by two Australian lawyers [...] in which they seem quite disturbed about the copyright questions related to the new Clips camera from Google. In case you haven't heard about it [...] Clips is a tiny camera that you "clip" somewhere while action is happening and it uses AI to try to take a bunch of good pictures. Sounds interesting enough, if it actually works.
But, as these lawyers note, it's not clear there's any copyright for users of the device, and there almost certainly isn't in Australia where they practice:
Under the Australian Copyright Act, subject to certain exceptions, copyright in an artistic work is owned by the author, which, in relation to a photograph, is "the person who took the photograph". Therefore, as simple as that, the owner of a Clip (or similar product) which takes photos by AI will not own copyright under Australian law, as they are not the person who "took" the photos.
Unfortunately for robots everywhere however, neither will the AI. As you might have noticed in the above quote, it is the person who took the photo who owns the copyright. While "person" is not defined in the Copyright Act, it is defined in the Acts Interpretation Act (which governs the interpretation of legislation), which provides that it includes an individual, body politic, or body corporate but not, by implication, a machine.
Therefore, the answer is that, under Australia law, no-one will own copyright in photos taken by AI. The photos simply will not be protected by copyright in Australia, as they do not have an "author" within the meaning of the Copyright Act. The Australian Federal Court reached a similar conclusion when it ruled that information sheets arranged by a computer program did not attract copyright protection.