“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…

"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,…

Brigitte Vézina, the Director of Policy and Open Culture, has facilitated the CC Copyright Platform for the past three years since the Platform’s relaunch in 2020. This year, the CC legal team—Kat Walsh and Yuanxiao Xu—is taking over the facilitator role for the Copyright Platform.  The Creative Commons Copyright Platform is a collaborative space for…

“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”: 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…

“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…

“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…

In 2022, two working groups (WGs) of the Creative Commons Copyright Platform collaborated on policy papers tackling issues related to copyright and access to knowledge. In this blog post, we highlight their insightful contributions to the CC copyright reform community. Working Group on Digital Sharing Spaces Led by Emine Yildirim, the WG on Digital Sharing…

"art is the universe creating itself as it goes" by submerged~, here slightly cropped, is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

“art is the universe creating itself as it goes” by submerged~, here slightly cropped, is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0. Looking for that perfect picture to illustrate your post? That catchy tune to jazz up your video? Look no further than Openverse, the huge library of free and open stock photos, images, and audio…

“Better Sharing With AI” by Creative Commons was generated by the DALL-E 2 AI platform with the text prompt “A surrealist painting in the style of Salvador Dali of a robot giving a gift to a person playing a cello.” CC dedicates any rights it holds to the image to the public domain via CC0.

Over the last year, innovation and use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has exploded, providing new ways for people to create content of all sorts. For example, it’s been used to help create award winning art, develop educational materials, expedite software development, and craft business materials. Recently, three artists filed a class action lawsuit in…