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NYC artist granted first known registered copyright for AI art

Kris Kashtanova received a copyright for a graphic novel titled Zarya of the Dawn made using the commercial AI art generator Midjourney. Photo courtesy of Kris Kashtanova/AI Comic Books
Kris Kashtanova received a copyright for a graphic novel titled Zarya of the Dawn made using the commercial AI art generator Midjourney. Photo courtesy of Kris Kashtanova/AI Comic Books

Sept. 24 (UPI) -- An artist based in New York City has been granted the first known registered copyright for artwork made using latent diffusion artificial intelligence.

Kris Kashtanova received a copyright for a graphic novel titled Zarya of the Dawn made using the commercial AI art generator Midjourney, according to a statement posted to their Instagram account. The copyright was verified by UPI through public records.

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"I got copyright from the Copyright Office of the USA on my Ai-generated graphic novel. I was open how it was made and put Midjourney on the cover page. It wasn't altered in any other way. Just the way you saw it here," Kashtanova said.

"I tried to make a case that we do own copyright when we make something using AI. I registered it as visual arts work. My certificate is in the mail and I got the number and a confirmation today that it was approved. My friend lawyer gave me this idea and I decided to make a precedent."

Though AI-generated art has likely been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in the past, Kashtanova's claim marks the first known to have been registered that used models powered by latent diffusion.

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The copyright was granted by the U.S. Copyright Office earlier this month amid ongoing controversy surrounding AI programs such as Midjourney, DALLE, Imagen and Nightcafe.

Some artists and photographers have criticized the art-making platforms for violating their own copyrights, as the models that make them work have been trained on images scraped from the internet and stock photography websites.

Earlier this week, Getty Images sent an email notifying users that the stock photo giant will cease to accept all submissions created using AI generative models such as Midjourney and previous submissions made of AI-generated art will be removed.

"There are open questions with respect to the copyright of outputs from these models and there are unaddressed rights issues with respect to the underlying imagery and metadata used to train these models," the statement from Getty Images reads.

"These changes do not prevent the submission of 3D renders and do not impact the use of digital editing tools with respect to modifying and creating imagery."

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