How to Protect the Genius of Our ChatGPT Prompts: A Copyright War

“A federal judge rejected an attempt to copyright an artwork generated by artificial intelligence in a decision last week. [The designer] created the artwork in question — a lush but pixelated scene of train tracks running through the countryside — in 2012, by asking his generator to produce an image.”

He didn’t just “ask the generator for an image,” though. He’d put in the hard yards. There were the bleary early mornings, mug of coffee in hand, when he sat on his deck wondering what kind of image to ask the generator for. And there was the bad hangnail he got gnawing on his thumb while he pondered. Might sound minor but it looked like it might get infected — Workers’ Compensation is there for a reason, the designer figured, typing up a claim.

Once he decided what to ask the generator for, there was more work ahead. At this point he had to ask himself what the client would want. Was that easy? Hell no. It could take up to 20 minutes.

The client wanted positive images of travel. The designer hit on the idea of train tracks running through the countryside. He must have phrased the request perfectly because the generator had deduced from the word “countryside” (a brilliant touch, the designer felt) that pure, rustic beauty was desired. It had nailed that. The designer realized the image, which appeared in .004 of a second, was perfect. What a great use of .06 of a second (together with clicking “Done”).

All he had to do now was copyright it, which he deserved to do since it had been the result of his prompt. That was where the real creativity lay, as they’d all heard at the company-wide presentations on AI. When before the company used writers who thought of a set of concepts (Christ, that could take all day) and wrapped it all in ingenious metaphors, yada yada yada, now AI would do that in a fraction of a second if you had the brainpower to ask it the right way.

The company set up webinars for employees to learn how to ask AI for things. Say you want an image of people cycling but not the standard Tour de France shot, more like cyclists on a tour of a place like Iceland. Type in the search bar, “picture of cyclists in Iceland.” Don’t overthink it. That’s as important as anything else.

Or what if the client is a motel chain but they want more glamorous imagery than Motel 6’s in parking lots — just ask for, “motels but pretty.” Boom. It might seem obvious but it isn’t. Well, it didn’t seem obvious to the webinar leaders. (Truthfully they all muttered to each other afterwards that it seemed pretty goddamn obvious.)

The company explained that by learning how to make AI requests the employees could use their creativity and judgment. The CIO said, “You’ll still be important, you’ll just be 8 billion times more efficient. Summer Fridays? Try ‘Log in once a week for three minutes.’ And get paid just for that. In a perfect world your salary wouldn’t go down but we’re scaling to this new technology.”

In the lateset meeting, the company said they were clearing room for more AI, which meant a lot of workers would transition their corporeal presences out of the office and off the payroll. There were long speeches about how important it was to use the technology for creative growth and not be late adapters who tried to work with outmoded concepts like jobs and morale.

“You must learn to work with AI,” the company said. It turned out everyone had loads of time to explore it because they were all unemployed. AI’s revolutionary capacity was something they’d just have to read about in the Wall St. Journal. But for a brief time they’d been part of it and that, in a way, was as exciting as the company had promised. Even if it was over in 6/10s of a second.