Generative AI And Copyright Part 1 And 2

Introduction

You would likely agree if we told you the above image was a hyper-realistic painting of a boy on a beach and be interested in knowing the talented artist who pulled off this impressive masterpiece.

What if we told you the artist here was not a natural person but a generative AI tool known as DALL-E, and all it took to 'paint' this piece, was to type the words, 'an African boy sitting on the beach staring at the ocean with the evening sun over him'. After typing in this phrase, it took DALL-E less than 10 seconds to develop four unique images, the above image being one of them, each conveying the message in the text prompt.

With tools like DALL-E, everyone can play at being an artist. But would that be enough to make us all artists, compared to those who use cameras, paint, and manipulate digital tools like CorelDraw to create original images? If I use ChatGPT to write a poem or an essay, can I rightly call that essay my original work?