The United States refused to register copyrights for the image created by the generative neural network, which won the last year’s art contest of Colorado. The decision was made by the US Copyright Office, which said the work, which was supplied, does not satisfy the demand for human authorship.
The image was created by artist Jason M. Allen in August 2022. A work called “Theater d’Opera Spatial” was created using the Midjourney Image Synthesis System and won first place in the category “Digital art/Digital processing of the photograph” at the event.
“Theater d’Opera Spatial” is credited to Midjourney under the leadership of Jason Allen.
Allen applied for copyright registration for the work in September. The Copyright Office requested additional information about the role of Midjourney in the art creation process. Allen stated that he made numerous adjustments and text requests to create the original version of the image.
The Copyright Office demanded that Allen officially abandon images created using Midjourney in order to be eligible for registration. When the artist refused, the application was rejected. On Tuesday, the decision was approved at the highest level.
In his appeal, Allen argued that the refusal of registration creates a “spacecraft” and represents an “evaluative judgment on the usefulness of various instruments.” However, these arguments were rejected by the Copyright Office.
This is not the first case of refusing to register AI-generated art. Previously, the Office invalidated the author’s protection of a series of images created by artist Chris Kashtanova using the same Midjourney platform.
Allen acknowledged that he expected the management’s decision and remains confident in his ultimate success. “If this decision remains in force, it will create more problems than it solves,” he said.
“This will definitely create new problems for the Copyright Office, and in ways that we cannot even imagine