Exhibit A, Disney, a giant megacorp whose most famous works are literally founded on public domain material.
Bear in mind that public domain is not like a copyleft license, it’s not “viral.” If I make a movie and the Mona Lisa shows up in it, that movie is still copyright to me even though there’s a public domain element in it. It’s even easier with unique AI-generated stuff because you can’t even tell what’s public domain and what isn’t.
Something has to be ownable to be public domain. AI produced items are un-ownable, since the AI is the owner, but it can’t own them since it’s a legally a “tool”.
You are deeply confused about what “public domain” means. Something that is un-ownable (in an intellectual property sense) is public domain.
You may be referring to the Thaler v. Perlmutter case when you say “AI is the owner?” That’s a widely misunderstood case that’s gone through quite the game of telephone in the media. The judge in it ruled that an AI cannot own copyright, but that doesn’t mean that AI-produced art is uncopyrightable. Just that AIs aren’t people, from a legal perspective, and you need to be a legal person to own copyright. If Thaler had claimed copyright for himself, as a person, things might have gone differently. But he didn’t.
Even if that were true, is there no value in public domain art resources?
Not to the companies looking to use AI.
Exhibit A, Disney, a giant megacorp whose most famous works are literally founded on public domain material.
Bear in mind that public domain is not like a copyleft license, it’s not “viral.” If I make a movie and the Mona Lisa shows up in it, that movie is still copyright to me even though there’s a public domain element in it. It’s even easier with unique AI-generated stuff because you can’t even tell what’s public domain and what isn’t.
Something has to be ownable to be public domain. AI produced items are un-ownable, since the AI is the owner, but it can’t own them since it’s a legally a “tool”.
You are deeply confused about what “public domain” means. Something that is un-ownable (in an intellectual property sense) is public domain.
You may be referring to the Thaler v. Perlmutter case when you say “AI is the owner?” That’s a widely misunderstood case that’s gone through quite the game of telephone in the media. The judge in it ruled that an AI cannot own copyright, but that doesn’t mean that AI-produced art is uncopyrightable. Just that AIs aren’t people, from a legal perspective, and you need to be a legal person to own copyright. If Thaler had claimed copyright for himself, as a person, things might have gone differently. But he didn’t.