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Category: Policy

Elevating Emerging Audiences: Share Your Experience

Better Internet

Calling all AI developers, NFT creators, and entrepreneurs As our world faces increasingly complex and interconnected challenges, it becomes clear that innovation and collaboration are essential to finding viable solutions. Creative Commons is proud of the thousands who make our global community. And this year, we’re expanding. We’re endeavoring to connect with groups who we’ve…

The Complex World of Style, Copyright, and Generative AI

Better Internet, Licenses & Tools, Open Creativity, Technology
Illustration of four superheroes, wearing masks and punk outfits and two holding guitars, standing in a washed out cityscape. “Grunge Heroes” by Stephen Wolfson for Creative Commons was generated by the Midjourney AI platform with the text prompt “a grunge band from the 1990s made up of superheroes.” CC dedicates any rights it holds to the image to the public domain via CC0.

In my previous posts on generative AI, I discussed fair use and AI training data, copyright over AI outputs, and a recent U.S. Copyright Office decision on registration for a work produced by generative AI. In the next posts in our series, I will look at claims (exemplified in a recent case against Stable Diffusion…

CC Supports the Case for Controlled Digital Lending

Better Internet, Open Access, Open Heritage
Headshot of Catherine Stihler, wearing a blue shawl standing in front of a body of water with buildings and clouds in the distance. "Catherine Stihler" by Martin Shields is licensed under CC BY 4.0

My name is Catherine Stihler, and I’m the CEO of Creative Commons. As a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the sharing and reuse of creativity and knowledge, we strongly support the Internet Archive in its defense of Controlled Digital Lending. Free, equitable, and open access to all knowledge stimulates creativity, is essential for research and learning,…

CC Community Input: Better Sharing for Generative AI

Better Internet, CC Global Network, Licenses & Tools, Open Creativity, Technology
Veins of hot glowing orange lava flowing through vein-like channels in dark black volcanic rock. Input” by jputman, here slightly cropped, is licensed via CC BY-SA 2.0.

Over the last year, innovation and use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has proliferated, providing new ways for people to create content from art to zines, and everything in between. At CC, we’ve been watching these experiments in creativity while considering what it all means for what we call better sharing: sharing that is contextual,…

Zarya of the Dawn: US Copyright Office Affirms Limits on Copyright of AI Outputs

Better Internet, Copyright, Licenses & Tools, Open Creativity, Technology
Close up of the face of Zarya, from the comic Zarya of the Dawn, looking intent in a dark urban landscape with glowing lights. “Zarya of the Dawn”: detail of an image generated by Midjourney AI from the full graphic novel by Kristina Kashtanova.

In a recent post, we explained why, absent significant and direct human creative input, generative AI outputs should not qualify for copyright protection. We noted that exactly what constitutes enough human input is not entirely clear; while a simple text prompt shouldn’t be enough, other areas will present more complex questions. Just this week, the…

This Is Not a Bicycle: Human Creativity and Generative AI

Better Internet, Licenses & Tools, Open Creativity, Technology
An image generated by the DALL-E 2 AI platform showing a slightly distorted yellowish-white bicycle with a basket, rear rack, and orange chain guard leaning against a brick building with a white stucco base near a gray standpipe. Bicycle”, here slightly cropped, by Stephen Wolfson for Creative Commons was generated by the DALL-E 2 AI platform with the text prompt “bicycle.” CC dedicates any rights it holds to the image to the public domain via CC0.

“Generative AI” has been the subject of much online conversation over the past few months. “Generative AI” refers to artificial intelligence (AI) models that can create different kinds of content by following user input and instructions. These models are trained on massive datasets of content — images, audio, text — that is harvested from the…

Fair Use: Training Generative AI

Better Internet, Copyright, Licenses & Tools, Open Creativity, Technology
Generated by AI: An oil painting in the style of Pieter Jansz Saenredam of a robot learning to follow a recipe in a Dutch kitchen with a large collection of tiny artworks arranged haphazardly on shelves. “Robot Training” by Creative Commons was generated by the DALL-E 2 AI platform with the text prompt “an oil painting in the style of Pieter Jansz Saenredam of a robot learning to follow a recipe in a Dutch kitchen with a large collection of tiny artworks arranged haphazardly on shelves.” CC dedicates any rights it holds to the image to the public domain via CC0.

While generative AI as a tool for artistic expression isn’t truly new — AI has been used to create art since at least the 1970s and the art auction house Christie’s sold its first piece of AI artwork in 2018 — the past year launched this exciting and disruptive technology into public awareness.  With incredible…