Black Cat 42

Copyright Corner Cases

• The image that came up when I entered the simple prompt “black cat” in Stable Diffusion with the default seed value of 42
  • cute
• I’ve used it several times in public and private settings, but I wanted to mention it by name, so I created a page @ 2022/09/16.
  • Example usage: Effect of Image Size on Stable Diffusion
  • Time of first generation unknown
    • We’re building the environment on 2022/08/25, so that should be the date.
    • Unexplored Junior Scrapbox has a post on 2022/08/29 10:49
• Whether this image is copyrighted or not
  • According to Nishio’s interpretation, “‘black cat’ expressed by a human being who wanted to draw a black cat cannot be considered a creative expression of thought or emotion, so the string is not a copyrighted work, nor is the image automatically generated by the program from its input.”
  • So Nishio agrees to treat this as public domain.
  • What would happen if someone independently of Nishio made the same input and obtained the same image, and that person claimed ‘this is my copyrighted work’?

Prompt automatically generated by img2prompt from this image

• “a painting of a black cat with yellow eyes, a color pencil sketch by Betye Saar, deviantart, folk art, creative commons attribution, chalk art, charcoal drawing”
  • (Nishio does not claim copyright on this string either.)
• Putting this prompt in does not reproduce the same picture.
• Can be included in other services.
  • Example of putting in [midjourney
  • 
• Is this prompt, which was automatically generated from a non-copyrightable image, also non-copyrightable?
  • Is the image created by entering this prompt also not copyrightable?
  • I think it’s practically impossible for a third party to deny when the author claims that the image is a copyrighted work because it’s not identifiable to a third party who only sees the image.
• What happens if you create a prompt from an image that is copyrighted by someone else and then create another image based on it?
  • Is programmatic prompting an adaptation?
  • Are prompts and newly created images derivative works?

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