The Zhangjiagang Court has dismissed a copyright infringement and unfair competition suit, ruling that ideas are not eligible for copyright protection. Creators using AI tools should ensure that their creative process is properly documented and could be reproduced.
I addressed that elsewhere above. The promptcan be legally protected as copyright except insofar as it might be viewed too trivial to deserve that. (What can and cannot be protected by copyright is very slippery; there has to be an element of creativity in what’s being protected, so you can’t copyright “I’ll have the egg salad” and prevent people from ever using that phrase when ordering sandwiches.)
But what you generate with the prompt can’t be. Because it’s not creative output from a human being. And if your prompt is sufficiently trivial, it can’t really be protected by copyright either. Courts have a tendency to go with what things are, not what they’re labelled as. In the USA, where courts tend to side with billionaires over actual human beings, the risk is higher that the courts will make a stupid ruling, but thankfully the USA’s laws aren’t extraterritorial, no matter how much they try to make them be.
One further point: even if the prompt is a “poem” (since literally anything can be a poem these days¹), there is nothing preventing someone from reciting that poem out loud. Or typing it into a conversational medium. Copyright protects others from making money from your work uncompensated. It doesn’t stop them from reciting it or every time you hummed the riff to “Iron Man” you’d get your ass sued.
I addressed that elsewhere above. The prompt can be legally protected as copyright except insofar as it might be viewed too trivial to deserve that. (What can and cannot be protected by copyright is very slippery; there has to be an element of creativity in what’s being protected, so you can’t copyright “I’ll have the egg salad” and prevent people from ever using that phrase when ordering sandwiches.)
But what you generate with the prompt can’t be. Because it’s not creative output from a human being. And if your prompt is sufficiently trivial, it can’t really be protected by copyright either. Courts have a tendency to go with what things are, not what they’re labelled as. In the USA, where courts tend to side with billionaires over actual human beings, the risk is higher that the courts will make a stupid ruling, but thankfully the USA’s laws aren’t extraterritorial, no matter how much they try to make them be.
One further point: even if the prompt is a “poem” (since literally anything can be a poem these days¹), there is nothing preventing someone from reciting that poem out loud. Or typing it into a conversational medium. Copyright protects others from making money from your work uncompensated. It doesn’t stop them from reciting it or every time you hummed the riff to “Iron Man” you’d get your ass sued.
¹ Case in point:
turnips are what now?