A fascinating case that could test the limits of several exceptions under EU copyright law is developing right now in Germany. Photographer Robert Kneschke used the website “Have I Been Trained?” to find out if his images were in the LAION 5b dataset. He found, in his own words “heaps Read more…
Yuga Labs, the makers of the popular NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club, has won a major legal victory on their ongoing litigation against artist Ryder Ripps. The claimants filed a motion for summary judgement, and the District Judge has granted some of their requests, while denying others. What is Read more…
A few years ago, a student came to see me during office hours to talk about their assignment. They were upset because their essay had received a low mark—not a fail, but much lower than expected. I knew from seminars that they were exceptionally bright and conscientious, participated in discussions, Read more…
I now have access to both ChatGPT and Bard, so I thought I would set them the same question, so I asked both this prompt: “write a 700 word blog post about image rights”. Here are the results, you be the judge. Bard: Image rights are the rights that an Read more…
There aint’ such a thing as the Metaverse. At least not in the sense that most people think about it. It’s a marketing ploy, a way to try to change the fortunes of a dwindling social media empire. Virtual reality is a niche medium, and that is not about to Read more…
If you’ve been following the AI scene, you may have seen a video by Corridor Crew entitled Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors. The video is a short animation telling the story of twin brothers who want to gain control of an unnamed kingdom, and one challenges the other to the Holy Read more…
I have now uploaded my latest article on copyright and artificial intelligence to SSRN, and I’m looking for constructive feedback (the article can be found here or if SSRN isn’t working, here). I’ve entitled it “A Scanner Darkly: Copyright Infringement in Artificial Intelligence Inputs and Outputs” in part as a Read more…
Luxury brand Hermès has won a trademark jury trial in New York against artist Mason Rothschild. The dispute was over Rothschild’s NFT collection MetaBirkins, which are sold on the marketplace SuperRare, consisting of links to images of furry Birkin bags. The jury awarded Hermès $133,000 USD in damages for trademark Read more…
What many of us had expected has finally happened, artist have sued for copyright infringement a couple of AI companies, as well as an art repository site (complaint here). Is this the end of AI tools? I don’t think so, I’ll try to explain why, this will not be a Read more…
I like Twitter. There are many things not to like about the site nowadays, but to me it remains a very interesting and vibrant place in which to spend my time. But after Elon Musk’s takeover, it has often been difficult to justify the reasons why I’m still spending time Read more…