Jason Allen, a Colorado Springs artist, is suing the U.S. Copyright Office for refusing to register the copyright of his AI-generated image, “Theatre D’opera Spatial.” Allen entered the artwork into the Colorado State Fair fine art competition in the summer of 2022 and won, upsetting other artists who hadn’t used AI. After his win, Allen applied for copyright protection for his work. He created the artwork by inputting “at least 624” prompts into the AI image generator Midjourney before achieving his desired result.
He then edited the image using Adobe Photoshop and Gigapixel AI to enhance its resolution and size. The Copyright Office has made it clear that AI-generated pictures are not eligible for copyright registration. They contrasted AI images with photography, stating that while a human decides on the elements of a photograph, AI imagery relies on a computer’s decision-making.
Despite this, Allen has vowed to continue his fight for copyright protection.
Artist fights for AI-generated art
His lawsuit states, “Mr.
Allen had a specific artistic idea, conceived of in his mind, and he used Midjourney as a tool to create an artistic expression of that idea. Such creative input is on par with that expressed by other types of artists and is capable of copyright protection.”
Allen’s attorney, Tamara Pester, distinguished his case from a precedent-setting 2023 case where the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the Copyright Office’s decision to deny copyright for an AI-generated visual work due to a lack of human authorship. Pester argued that the Copyright Office’s decision in Allen’s case “raises profound questions about the role of AI in the creative process and the nature of creativity itself.” She hopes that a favorable ruling will “give a lot of assurance to these creators using the newest technology tools that their work isn’t somehow ineligible for protection or able to be infringed simply because they used the most modern tool available.”
Allen has faced significant backlash from the art community but remains committed to defending AI-assisted art.
“I am standing in defense of my rights to express myself using AI generative tools and against a popular narrative that a lot of people for some unknown agenda are pushing really hard to prevent people from being able to express themselves,” he said. The ongoing legal battle has reignited discussions about the role of AI in creative processes and could have far-reaching implications for artists using AI tools. As AI continues to evolve, the outcome of Allen’s case could set an important precedent for how copyright law is applied to AI-generated works.
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