I am a professional artist (that is really excited about ai) and I deal with a lot of licensing and IP. This is probably going to be really boring and niche. Afterwards if you like, I can tell you something fun and interesting about a topic of your choice.
As I understand AI-generated work in not copyrightable. Right?
Eh... Maybe. Probably not? We don't really know. Unfortunately, these things usually get worked out in lawsuits. The court decides on a case by case basis until we can sort of glom together a collective understanding of how something generally works.
Since everything is happening so fast, we really just have to wait and see how everything shakes out. I actually suspect the use of ai generated art is going to go in directions people arent really anticipating or planning for, so this honestly could be a bit of moot discussion anyway. Like all the arguing and debating people did about the soul and organ transplants. I mean, not like that but like that.
Is it legal to sell Ai-generated art if you don't have copyrights of created artwork.
Yes, absolutely. There are two ways you can not have copyright. One is someone else owns the copyright. The second is if there is no copyright. Ai art is most likely falling into the second category. A person didn't create it so it wasn't granted copyright upon creation. That means you don't have copyright, but neither does anyone else. You can do with it whatever you damn well please... Depending on the Terms of Service of the ai, blah blah blah.
But it also means anyone else can, too. It's a free for all.
But here's where things are going to get wild. Bc artwork can be fair use, no copyright but a specific image or file of that artwork can be copyrighted. So, like, think of an illustration in a children's book. Maybe that illustration isn't copyrighted. But if I go and find the book and photograph the image or scan it and then clean up the file then I own the copyright to that file. I made it.
This is actually true of a lot of things. A typeface cannot be copyrighted. No one owns the rights to a specific style of the English alphabet. But the font itself - the file that tells the computer how to display the typeface... Well that is copyrighted.
So what's that mean for ai? No fucking idea. But my guess is that post ai generation file manipulation will likely result in a copyrightable file. The image itself might be fair use but your specific file of that image would be yours.
If it is not copyrightable can I sell Ai-generated art as NFT? Is it legal?
NFTs are a spectacular clusterfuck. This about to get wilder. When you buy or sell an NFT, you aren't buying or selling an image. You're buying and selling a link to an image. The link is what gets recorded and stored on the blockchain. Bc it's much smaller and simpler and more manageable. There might be some included verbiage about where the link should lead or what rights are being transferred to the owner possessor of the link, but it's also possible there isn't.
The NFT is like a certificate of ownership acting as a contract. All that to say, upi could use ai art for an NFT. But you could also theoretically use any art for an NFT. Because you aren't selling the art and you don't have to grant the purchaser any actual license. It's entirely possible that the only IP infringement in selling someone else's artwork as an NFT would be using their images on the auction site. Bc the original artist wouldn't really have any rights to the URL link, really, and that's what you've effectively sold.
But also, NFTs are super new. If they have any longevity, we won't really work out all the kinks until years and years from now.
As I understand you can't actually be an Artist if you have no copyrights of created artwork. So by definition "Ai Artist" as profession does not exists?
Let's take this in two parts.
First, lots of artists don't really own copyright to created works bc lots of artists don't end up with tangible artwork. Performance artists, earthworks or land artists, sand painters, ephemeral artists, perhaps even graffiti artists. They all create work that is transitory or temporary or un-own-able or experiential. But they're all still artists in their own right.
And loads of artists create artwork and then renounce their automatic copyright, releasing things for creative commons or fair use. They're still artists too. Personally, I don't sell any art - I sell licenses of my art. Thousands and thousands of licenses for each artwork. Hundreds of thousands of people who all own access and rights to something I created. And I'm not alone. Licensing is how a lot of artists make art a viable career. I can sell something for $500 or I can sell it for $5k in $5 increments. I still file my taxes as an artist.
The high brow art world has this attitude that you must hoard your copyright at all costs bc it's the only thing of value and your work is your identity and the dollar amount your hold out for determines your worth.
Anything else is selling out or selling yourself short. Which I think is pretty horseshit. Copyright protects an artist, it doesn't define them. And it honestly does a shit job of protecting considering you need money and time to sue in order to protect and defend it anyway.
Secondly, ai artists probably isn't a profession... Yet. Bc people are still learning how to monetize and leverage ai art. But it will be a profession. Maybe it won't be an "artist", though. Maybe it will use another word. Like engineer or promptor or designer or whatever. But that's just semantics. I personally think ai artist is going to be an artist that utilizes ai in their process. Maybe ai is 98% of the process or maybe it's 2%.
It's kind of like... Self driving cars. Will you be a "driver" if you just direct the car? Or will you be a navigator? Or an operator? Or a passenger? But does it even really matter? If the car gets you where you need to go, the details are inconsequential.
"The US Copyright Office will consider an AI-generated work copyrightable if a human can prove they themselves put a meaningful amount of creative effort into the final content." - What does it mean?
I don't really know. No one does. Including the US copyright office. We won't know until a bunch of people press the issue and they start making decisions and drawing lines in the sand and clarifying. The US patent office is the babysitter who was told the kids need to be bed in bed by 9. We are the kids. Some of us will go to bed by 9. And others of us will argue about whether we have to be asleep by 9 or just in bed by 9. And if we go to bed, do we have to stay there? For how long? We won't get answers to those questions until the kids start forcing the babysitter to make decide on the answers.
What if I don't live in US? Can I sell the artwork by simply changing my geolocation?
Yes. The things you sell in other countries are beholden to their laws, not ours. That's why Canada can't sell their low-cost drugs and prescription-free contacts in the US. And why manufacturers and sellers in countries with few IP laws, like China, can run into trouble when they sell knockoff items here that are perfectly legal in China.
But also, you don't have to do any of that. You can totally just sell your shit in the US, too. It does not matter one flying fuck if you and your creations are never certified as genuine art by the art world. You don't need their approval or validation. You don't even have to be an artist making art - you don't need labels or a description or a job title. You can just do whatever the hell you love doing and find an audience for it. And if that audience pays you for it, then you're doing better than a lot of artistes creating masterpieces in their own mind with the finest brushes and handground pigments.
What the fuck ever, go make money and have fun.