This really makes the Studios costing themselves even more money (and getting more unions involved) by prolonging the strike for the promise of free ai labor even more fucking funny. you dumb fucking bastards lol
I personally said the same thing when AI art was first really taking off. Oh and you can thank PETA for this.
For those that don’t know, there’s a semi-famous story of a wildlife photographer who had her camera stolen by some monkeys she was taking pictures of. When she got her camera back, she discovered one of the monkeys had taken a selfie, and she published the image in a journal as a “look what happened” kind of story. PETA, being the insufferable waste they are, took it upon themselves to sue the photographer, claiming that because the Monkey took the picture, the monkey owns the copyright and thus the photographer was not allowed to publish it. The courts ruled this whole thing stupid and that now art can only be considered protected by copywrite if it was made by a human. So, this “only made by humans” ruling could easily apply to AI as well, meaning Hollywood is gonna screw themselves over if they try to replace their writers with bots.
Me: I don’t want to thank PETA for anything. Me: …actually, that’s funny, they can have this one.
I don’t want to thank PETA. I’m going to thank the monkey instead
The photographer in question is David Slater, a wildlife photographer who spent weeks befriending a troop of macaques and setting up his camera equipment in such a way that if a curious monkey pressed a button, it would take what appeared to be a selfie. The above image is one of a set. He was not a woman whose camera was stolen and just happened to result in a monkey selfie.
The lawsuit that reconfirmed that “non-human people” cannot hold copyright in American law was nothing to do with PETA – it was actually the Wikipedia Foundation. They were hosting the image on the Wikipedia Commons because they held that as the monkey took the photo, it therefore fell under public domain. And that’s true, and the court re-affirmed that works created by non-humans can indeed not be copyrighted, but made no judgement on whether David Slater was the true owner or not. Legal experts reckon he does have enough of a role in the creation of the images to establish copyright.
The PETA thing was a completely separate challenge where they swung on from stage left and insisted that animals SHOULD be allowed to be copyright holders, and therefore the macaque should get the money from the picture, but as the macaque can’t use money, the money should go to PETA on its behalf.
Which was totally dismissed as being motivated by furthering PETA’s own interests, rather than the rights of the monkey
So, it’s actually Wikipedia you can thank for this, and you can go back to laughing at PETA and stuffing them in a locker.
amhrancas 