AI-generated "Voynich manuscript pages"

[MichelleL11]

Marco said:

While I find this software fascinating, I doubt it can have a direct relevance for the VMS. At most, it is one more proof of the amazing things that AI can do. I guess that people sufficiently skilled in linguistic AI could significantly contribute to voynichology (and they probably will, in the next few years).


Well, darn -- but I knew I was being too naive to think we could just feed stuff in and have something helpful come out.  At least at this point.

That being said, I can contribute one interesting thing about this area.  It is actually a very hot topic as to who exactly owns the copyright of the produced images.

The reason this is an issue is that at least under US law, the owner is the "author" and creation is when the work becomes "fixed in a tangible medium."  Notably, the work has to be "original" but that is a pretty low bar.  Certainly, if it was a human was putting these images together, that human would be the author and the copyright in the created images would be owned by them. 

Is the AI program the "author" of the pages we see in this string?  There is already caselaw that a computer program cannot be an "author." But if not the computer program, then who?  The human coder(s) of the program?  The person who enters the parameters?  A combination?  

Certainly, Marco or Koen or Matthias "helped" with the prompts but is pretty clear they did not "fix it in a tangible medium" - that was the program.

I'm sure a few of you will think that there should be no copyright at all -- but that isn't really realistic given the system as it has evolved.  What if Marco and Koen and Matthias just wanted attribution credit?  There should be some sort of method for them to be able to require that which normally would involve copyright ownership.  But at this point, it is far from clear whether they own any copyright at all.  

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out . . .