Jason Allen's Appeal Against US Copyright Office's Rejection of AI-Generated Work

TapTechNews October 7th news, according to ArsTechnica's report tonight, Jason Allen, a synthetic media artist, has drawn widespread attention and controversy for winning an award in a state art competition with his work Théâtre D’opéra Spatial created through Midjourney. However, last fall, the US Copyright Office rejected his application for registration of the work and considered it to be almost entirely AI-generated.

The reason given by the US Copyright Office at that time was that the applied work must have a certain amount of human creative elements, and simply inputting prompt words into Midjourney is not enough to constitute creation.

Currently, the latest development is that Allen is currently appealing this decision and requesting judicial review. He said that the negative media attention around the work may have affected the copyright examiner's perception and judgment, and he believes that the examiner was biased - considering some improper factors including public reaction.

Allen believes that the rule that the Copyright Office requires examiners to assess which parts of the work are human-created is completely arbitrary because the level of examiners varies, and some may be unable to distinguish at all between artworks created using AI and those created purely by hand. He worries that the Copyright Office's wrong judgment may make artists suspects, leading to an increase in copyright disputes.

Allen hopes that the jury reviewing his appeal can overturn the Copyright Office's rejection decision and believes that there is more human creative elements in his AI-generated work than recognized by the Copyright Office. He believes that the prompt words can inspire the artist's creativity. The Copyright Office fails to realize that using Midjourney is not random generation, but as a tool to assist in realizing a specific visual concept.

TapTechNews learned that Allen emphasized in his application that Théâtre D’opéra Spatial is an original work that reflects the efforts he has made during the creation process. He spent more than 100 hours in repeated iterations to optimize the prompt words, and the entire process is estimated to have used more than 600 prompt words.

For this reason, he believes that crafting the perfect prompt words should be regarded as a human creative process. He questions why the Copyright Office wants to distinguish between AI and human creation, and emphasizes human creative intention is crucial in artistic creation.

However, currently, Allen refuses to share the prompts with the Copyright Office because he is worried that it will reveal the secret of his creation. He insists that the time spent and the complex creative process show sufficient human effort and meet the requirements of the Copyright Office. He hopes that through this appeal, clearer guidance can be provided for the copyright issue of AI artworks.