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Stephen Wolfson

Stephen M. Wolfson is the Associate Director of Research and Copyright Services for the University of Georgia School of Law. In this role, Stephen manages the research services department while also providing expertise on copyright to the law school community. Stephen also teaches courses on copyright law for undergraduates and legal research courses for law students. Prior to his time at UGA, Stephen held positions at both the University of North Texas in Denton and the University of Texas at Austin.

Stephen received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and his Juris Doctor from the Ohio State University and his Master of Science in Information Studies from the University of Texas.

Stephen grew up in beautiful Chagrin Falls, Ohio. He now resides in Athens, Georgia, with his wife, Stephanie, their son, Clarke, and dog, Kona. When he’s not telling anyone who will listen about the nuances of copyright law and benefits of open access policy, Stephen rides his bike moderately fast while dodging cars with other spandex-clad cyclists around the Southeast. Sometimes he talks about copyright then, too.

Posts by Stephen Wolfson

Everything might be OK! Warhol v. Goldsmith

by Kat Walsh, Stephen Wolfson Copyright

The United States Supreme Court released its opinion today in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith. While it’s hard to predict the full ramifications of this decision at this point, our initial opinion is that this decision is not ideal, but also not the death knell for transformative fair use that many feared it could have…

Style, Copyright, and Generative AI Part 2: Vicarious Liability

by Stephen Wolfson Better Internet, Licenses & Tools, Open Creativity, Technology

In my last blog post, I looked at whether copyright protects artistic style, particularly in the context of generative AI (GAI) art tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. However, in the class action litigation against Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, the plaintiffs are not only concerned that people can use the GAI tools to produce works…

The Complex World of Style, Copyright, and Generative AI

by Stephen Wolfson Better Internet, Licenses & Tools, Open Creativity, Technology

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…

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

by Stephen Wolfson Better Internet, Copyright, Licenses & Tools, Open Creativity, Technology

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

by Stephen Wolfson Better Internet, Licenses & Tools, Open Creativity, Technology

“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…