Robots Can't Copyright

In the mid-twentieth century adult magazines were the highest paying market for fiction. And serious quality fiction, as well. Which may seem odd, but the reason for this was that they had to prove literary merit to avoid being banned as purely obscene. So, Playboy, for example, was the highest paying place to publish a story, paying a hundred times the average rate. 

To prove that they were a legitimate literary outlet, this sort of periodicals needed to show they were printing authors who were respected. So they paid enough that the best of the best wanted to publish with them. 

When I say that the development and usage of generative artificial intelligence is going to take some weird twists and turns, I don't know what those twists and turns will be. But it will take a while to get the legal, ethical, and practical questions worked out and we are likely to have odd quirks of history like this one above.

At this moment in time, Hollywood and publishers are trying to ensure they have the legal rights to create generative artificial intelligence based simulations of the work of writers and actors to avoid paying them. They are putting out contracts that require actors and writers to sign away their likenesses or their style for as little as one day of work paid at the normal daily rate for that work. Imagine that for a second for yourself and your own career.

The legal situation is clearly against Hollywood, though. The courts have confirmed repeatedly that non-human created work cannot be legally copyrighted. 

It doesn't matter if they're monkeys, or computers. You have to be able to prove human provenance if you want to own something. You have to own something to make money off of it. You have to make money to buy food. You have to have food to eat. I like eating. 

And copyright is also the means used to establish ownership over software. I agree that's another weird quirk of history, and patenting would probably have been the better choice, but this is a quirk that could have a big impact right now. 

If I were a software company who was proudly proclaiming that I was using generative artificial intelligence to create the software I was selling, my top priority right now would be ensuring I could prove human provenance for every single character in my code. 

Because, unless you can do that, you run the risk of it being de facto open source all of the sudden. 

If you need help with that, let me know. Data is kind of my thing.