Can You Own What an AI Created?

A monkey started this conversation in 2011

Image generated by AI from my text prompts, 2023. Who owns the copyright on this image?

British nature photographer David Slater did not directly take the following picture of a monkey in 2011. The monkey took the selfie using equipment David left in the forest for that purpose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute#/media/File:Macaca_nigra_self-portrait_full_body.jpg — Listed as Public Domain 2023

David claimed the copyright in 2011 and that’s when a new kind of ownership question came up:

Can a person own a copyright for something not directly created by a person?

Perhaps not?

In 2014 the United States Copyright Office ruled no. So, the “Monkey Selfie” picture is in the public domain and can be shared without compensating David.

All things created by non-humans are in the public domain by US Copyright rules.

But did the monkey really create the picture? Is this picture truly the creative product of a monkey?

Monkeys and Artificial Intelligence (AI)