Latest news with #Thaler
The Advertiser
09-05-2025
- Politics
- The Advertiser
'Six months of hell': review to sort vexatious council complaints from misconduct
Local councillors could be penalised for making "vexatious" complaints about their colleagues in an attempt to drive down grievance reports to the state government regulator. The impending suspension of Snowy Monaro Regional councillor Andrew Thaler for three months over comments made on social media was a hot topic at the Local Government NSW rural and regional summit held in Sydney on May 8. One of the targets of Mr Thaler's online comments, Tanya Higgins, thanked the Office of Local Government for its response to the conduct, which also requires Mr Thaler to apologise for his actions. "We've gone through six months of hell," she told local government deputy secretary Brett Whitworth from the floor of the conference. "I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but I'm a woman in local government who has felt unsafe, unable to do my job the way I should be able to do it - and that is not right." Mr Thaler was reported in Sydney media as calling Ms Higgins a "fat dumb blonde" in a March 5 video. In a local interview published on YouTube on May 9, Mr Thaler doubled down. "I called a fat councillor a fat liar," he said in the interview, which he also linked to from his own social media with the text: 'am sorry'. "I used the word as an intensive and a play on words," he said in the video. But Ms Higgins also wanted to know if the Snowy Monaro experiences would influence the ongoing review of the councillor code of conduct. "I would like some assurances that this hasn't been for nothing," she said. "I know your team have been working really hard and I just hope there's time for this to be brought into that reform process." Mr Thaler said he would be fighting the suspension, due to start later this month. "No, of course it's not fair. It's a load of shit and I will be fighting it," he told ACM, the publisher of this masthead. He accused Ms Higgins of calling him "the ugliest man alive" a number of years ago. Meanwhile, Mr Whitworth said he hoped to establish a system in which "bad behaviour" concerns were sent to a privileges committee to be judged by a panel of peers and alleged "serious misconduct" was investigated by his office. The review was also examining how to reduce unfounded complaints without jeopardising freedom of political communication. "We will also need to look at what are the incentives to prevent people from making vexatious complaints," he told councillors gathered at the State Library of NSW. "The minister has also asked me to look at ... whether there are powers that I already have under the Local Government Act to actually take action against councillors that are making vexatious complaints against other councillors." In 2023-24, there were 1242 complaints lodged about councils state wide, 40 of those misconduct referrals. In the past five financial years, the Office of Local Government has recorded a total of 6,223 council complaints. Of those, 189 were misconduct referrals. There were 27 misconduct investigations in that time. At the rural and regional councillor summit, Lithgow councillor Elizabeth Fredericks pointed to the case of Bathurst colleague Sophie Wright, who told the Western Advocate in April she had so many code of conduct complaints against her she had to withdraw from committees to find the time to respond to them all. "Haters" were using the code of conduct to harass councillors, Ms Fredericks said. "If you want us to be a third-level government, you need to start giving us the protection that the other two have." Any reforms also needed to protect people's right to free communication, Mr Whitworth said. "[The Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig] has also asked me to try and better define how that implied freedom of political communication can be understood and expressed and applied," he said. Local councillors could be penalised for making "vexatious" complaints about their colleagues in an attempt to drive down grievance reports to the state government regulator. The impending suspension of Snowy Monaro Regional councillor Andrew Thaler for three months over comments made on social media was a hot topic at the Local Government NSW rural and regional summit held in Sydney on May 8. One of the targets of Mr Thaler's online comments, Tanya Higgins, thanked the Office of Local Government for its response to the conduct, which also requires Mr Thaler to apologise for his actions. "We've gone through six months of hell," she told local government deputy secretary Brett Whitworth from the floor of the conference. "I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but I'm a woman in local government who has felt unsafe, unable to do my job the way I should be able to do it - and that is not right." Mr Thaler was reported in Sydney media as calling Ms Higgins a "fat dumb blonde" in a March 5 video. In a local interview published on YouTube on May 9, Mr Thaler doubled down. "I called a fat councillor a fat liar," he said in the interview, which he also linked to from his own social media with the text: 'am sorry'. "I used the word as an intensive and a play on words," he said in the video. But Ms Higgins also wanted to know if the Snowy Monaro experiences would influence the ongoing review of the councillor code of conduct. "I would like some assurances that this hasn't been for nothing," she said. "I know your team have been working really hard and I just hope there's time for this to be brought into that reform process." Mr Thaler said he would be fighting the suspension, due to start later this month. "No, of course it's not fair. It's a load of shit and I will be fighting it," he told ACM, the publisher of this masthead. He accused Ms Higgins of calling him "the ugliest man alive" a number of years ago. Meanwhile, Mr Whitworth said he hoped to establish a system in which "bad behaviour" concerns were sent to a privileges committee to be judged by a panel of peers and alleged "serious misconduct" was investigated by his office. The review was also examining how to reduce unfounded complaints without jeopardising freedom of political communication. "We will also need to look at what are the incentives to prevent people from making vexatious complaints," he told councillors gathered at the State Library of NSW. "The minister has also asked me to look at ... whether there are powers that I already have under the Local Government Act to actually take action against councillors that are making vexatious complaints against other councillors." In 2023-24, there were 1242 complaints lodged about councils state wide, 40 of those misconduct referrals. In the past five financial years, the Office of Local Government has recorded a total of 6,223 council complaints. Of those, 189 were misconduct referrals. There were 27 misconduct investigations in that time. At the rural and regional councillor summit, Lithgow councillor Elizabeth Fredericks pointed to the case of Bathurst colleague Sophie Wright, who told the Western Advocate in April she had so many code of conduct complaints against her she had to withdraw from committees to find the time to respond to them all. "Haters" were using the code of conduct to harass councillors, Ms Fredericks said. "If you want us to be a third-level government, you need to start giving us the protection that the other two have." Any reforms also needed to protect people's right to free communication, Mr Whitworth said. "[The Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig] has also asked me to try and better define how that implied freedom of political communication can be understood and expressed and applied," he said. Local councillors could be penalised for making "vexatious" complaints about their colleagues in an attempt to drive down grievance reports to the state government regulator. The impending suspension of Snowy Monaro Regional councillor Andrew Thaler for three months over comments made on social media was a hot topic at the Local Government NSW rural and regional summit held in Sydney on May 8. One of the targets of Mr Thaler's online comments, Tanya Higgins, thanked the Office of Local Government for its response to the conduct, which also requires Mr Thaler to apologise for his actions. "We've gone through six months of hell," she told local government deputy secretary Brett Whitworth from the floor of the conference. "I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but I'm a woman in local government who has felt unsafe, unable to do my job the way I should be able to do it - and that is not right." Mr Thaler was reported in Sydney media as calling Ms Higgins a "fat dumb blonde" in a March 5 video. In a local interview published on YouTube on May 9, Mr Thaler doubled down. "I called a fat councillor a fat liar," he said in the interview, which he also linked to from his own social media with the text: 'am sorry'. "I used the word as an intensive and a play on words," he said in the video. But Ms Higgins also wanted to know if the Snowy Monaro experiences would influence the ongoing review of the councillor code of conduct. "I would like some assurances that this hasn't been for nothing," she said. "I know your team have been working really hard and I just hope there's time for this to be brought into that reform process." Mr Thaler said he would be fighting the suspension, due to start later this month. "No, of course it's not fair. It's a load of shit and I will be fighting it," he told ACM, the publisher of this masthead. He accused Ms Higgins of calling him "the ugliest man alive" a number of years ago. Meanwhile, Mr Whitworth said he hoped to establish a system in which "bad behaviour" concerns were sent to a privileges committee to be judged by a panel of peers and alleged "serious misconduct" was investigated by his office. The review was also examining how to reduce unfounded complaints without jeopardising freedom of political communication. "We will also need to look at what are the incentives to prevent people from making vexatious complaints," he told councillors gathered at the State Library of NSW. "The minister has also asked me to look at ... whether there are powers that I already have under the Local Government Act to actually take action against councillors that are making vexatious complaints against other councillors." In 2023-24, there were 1242 complaints lodged about councils state wide, 40 of those misconduct referrals. In the past five financial years, the Office of Local Government has recorded a total of 6,223 council complaints. Of those, 189 were misconduct referrals. There were 27 misconduct investigations in that time. At the rural and regional councillor summit, Lithgow councillor Elizabeth Fredericks pointed to the case of Bathurst colleague Sophie Wright, who told the Western Advocate in April she had so many code of conduct complaints against her she had to withdraw from committees to find the time to respond to them all. "Haters" were using the code of conduct to harass councillors, Ms Fredericks said. "If you want us to be a third-level government, you need to start giving us the protection that the other two have." Any reforms also needed to protect people's right to free communication, Mr Whitworth said. "[The Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig] has also asked me to try and better define how that implied freedom of political communication can be understood and expressed and applied," he said. Local councillors could be penalised for making "vexatious" complaints about their colleagues in an attempt to drive down grievance reports to the state government regulator. The impending suspension of Snowy Monaro Regional councillor Andrew Thaler for three months over comments made on social media was a hot topic at the Local Government NSW rural and regional summit held in Sydney on May 8. One of the targets of Mr Thaler's online comments, Tanya Higgins, thanked the Office of Local Government for its response to the conduct, which also requires Mr Thaler to apologise for his actions. "We've gone through six months of hell," she told local government deputy secretary Brett Whitworth from the floor of the conference. "I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but I'm a woman in local government who has felt unsafe, unable to do my job the way I should be able to do it - and that is not right." Mr Thaler was reported in Sydney media as calling Ms Higgins a "fat dumb blonde" in a March 5 video. In a local interview published on YouTube on May 9, Mr Thaler doubled down. "I called a fat councillor a fat liar," he said in the interview, which he also linked to from his own social media with the text: 'am sorry'. "I used the word as an intensive and a play on words," he said in the video. But Ms Higgins also wanted to know if the Snowy Monaro experiences would influence the ongoing review of the councillor code of conduct. "I would like some assurances that this hasn't been for nothing," she said. "I know your team have been working really hard and I just hope there's time for this to be brought into that reform process." Mr Thaler said he would be fighting the suspension, due to start later this month. "No, of course it's not fair. It's a load of shit and I will be fighting it," he told ACM, the publisher of this masthead. He accused Ms Higgins of calling him "the ugliest man alive" a number of years ago. Meanwhile, Mr Whitworth said he hoped to establish a system in which "bad behaviour" concerns were sent to a privileges committee to be judged by a panel of peers and alleged "serious misconduct" was investigated by his office. The review was also examining how to reduce unfounded complaints without jeopardising freedom of political communication. "We will also need to look at what are the incentives to prevent people from making vexatious complaints," he told councillors gathered at the State Library of NSW. "The minister has also asked me to look at ... whether there are powers that I already have under the Local Government Act to actually take action against councillors that are making vexatious complaints against other councillors." In 2023-24, there were 1242 complaints lodged about councils state wide, 40 of those misconduct referrals. In the past five financial years, the Office of Local Government has recorded a total of 6,223 council complaints. Of those, 189 were misconduct referrals. There were 27 misconduct investigations in that time. At the rural and regional councillor summit, Lithgow councillor Elizabeth Fredericks pointed to the case of Bathurst colleague Sophie Wright, who told the Western Advocate in April she had so many code of conduct complaints against her she had to withdraw from committees to find the time to respond to them all. "Haters" were using the code of conduct to harass councillors, Ms Fredericks said. "If you want us to be a third-level government, you need to start giving us the protection that the other two have." Any reforms also needed to protect people's right to free communication, Mr Whitworth said. "[The Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig] has also asked me to try and better define how that implied freedom of political communication can be understood and expressed and applied," he said.
Yomiuri Shimbun
02-05-2025
- Health
- Yomiuri Shimbun
‘Nudges' Can Promote Good Behavior, But Have Limits
At any convenience store, there are now footprint marks on the floor that lead up to the cash registers. People wait on these marks without thinking about them. This behavior has become a part of our everyday lives. In fact, the marks were introduced to encourage people to social distance during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on what is called 'nudge' theory. In this theory, 'nudges' refer to techniques that promote changes in people's behavior without restricting their choices or significantly changing their economic incentives. Examples of nudges include providing simple and easy-to-understand information and the framing effect, which refers to how people's impressions and decision-making are influenced when identical information is presented in different ways. Footprint marks are easily understood to mean that this is where you should wait, and they prompt people to do just that: wait there. If the store simply puts a notice in front of the cash register saying, 'Please keep a distance of at least one meter from the person in front of you when lining up,' the effect will likely be more limited. Few would even take the trouble to read this notice. Even those who do are unlikely to feel motivated enough to follow it. Footprint marks, by contrast, seem to offer a way to encourage people to naturally 'behave better' without hassling them. The use of nudges grew significantly after Richard Thaler, a professor at the University of Chicago, won the 2017 Nobel prize for economics. Thaler was highly praised for applying nudges in various policy areas as he advanced behavioral economics, which incorporates psychology into economics. Nudges now play a role in encouraging individuals to eat healthier and exercise, become organ donors and conserve the environment, among other beneficial behaviors. Going global Nudges have spread to public institutions around the world. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported in 2017 that more than 200 public agencies had incorporated nudges into their policies. In Japan, too, the central government's ministries and agencies, local governments, industrial organizations and academia joined hands in April 2017 to inaugurate the Nudge Unit of Japan. Local governments have themselves set up 26 local nudge units and their activities are shared on the Jichitai Nudge Share website. Nudges are likely favored as policy tools because many of them are less costly and can be implemented at the discretion of civil servants. Taxes and subsidies require approval from legislative organs or budgetary measures. Devising nudges, on the other hand, can be made merely with the clever use of language and is almost cost-free. And in fact, Japan's laws often include a 'mandatory effort' clause, requiring people to try to comply with the law. There is a strong need to promote desirable behavior without coercion, and this may also have had an impact on the use of nudges. An example of a 'mandatory effort' clause in Japan is one requiring cyclists to wear helmets. Even if a cyclist does not follow the rule, there will be no penalty. The policy objective is to encourage 'desirable' behavior while guaranteeing freedom of choice, and in such cases, nudges are a natural means of achieving this. During the pandemic, a mandatory effort clause stipulated people make an effort to get vaccinated, which meant that the decision of whether to get a shot was left up to them. At that time, a study was conducted abroad, focusing on what kinds of nudge promoted COVID-19 vaccinations. The findings showed that one effective message was stating that a vaccine was 'reserved for you.' This outcome was due to the 'endowment effect,' which comes from behavioral economics theory. A study jointly conducted by Shusaku Sasaki, a specially appointed associate professor at the University of Osaka; Tomoya Saito, director of the Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases; and myself found that an effective message for motivating the elderly in Japan to get a COVID-19 shot was: 'Your vaccination encourages the people around you to get vaccinated.' In the case of COVID-19, just the effectiveness of the vaccines could not be used in messaging because the vaccines were new to us and the virus was mutating. Nudges are an important policy instrument that promote socially desirable decision-making and behavior while ensuring people's autonomy. That said, as Toshiji Kawagoe, a professor at Future University Hakodate, discusses in his book 'Kodo Keizaigaku no Shi' (The death of behavioral economics), nudges are not a panacea and in some cases they have been ineffective or produced the opposite effect to what was intended. George Loewenstein, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, and Nick Chater, a professor at Warwick Business School in the United Kingdom, have argued in a joint academic paper that while there are areas where the right approach is to use taxes and subsidies, there are other areas where these should be combined with nudges. Strengths and limitations By focusing too much on nudges, governments could end up being slow to implement necessary policies using taxes, subsidies or regulations. Shlomo Benartzi, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, and other researchers carried out a study to determine the cost-effectiveness of using nudges to increase college enrollment, energy conservation and influenza vaccinations, relative to traditional policy tools such as taxes and subsidies. The study found that, in these three areas, nudges were more cost-effective than taxes and subsidies. But recent research has suggested that nudges could negate the effects of those measures. According to a study by Hunt Allcott, a professor at Stanford University in the United States, and other researchers, even if nudges are effective on average, the magnitude and direction of the effect may be different for different people, making them an undesirable tool from a policy perspective. For example, according to their report, health warning labels on sugary drinks cause 'health nuts' to excessively reduce consumption, but they can be less effective for 'inattentives,' the real target of the health warnings. There are cases where nudges are ineffective. An article by Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard University, notes cases where people with strong preferences or beliefs, as well as companies and organizations with vested interests, take actions to counteract nudges. It has also been said people who feel their freedoms have been infringed upon become so resentful that they act counter to the nudge. On the other hand, a nudge intervention that appeals to social norms, such as 'Many people are doing this,' can be effective but causes its own problems. When the pandemic broke out, mask wearing was widely adopted as an infection control measure thanks to the phrase 'wear a mask for the good of society.' However, once the social norm of wearing masks took root, it persisted even after its necessity for wearing masks had diminished. When promoting good health or environmental protection, there is little change in what is considered desirable behavior. But infection control measures vary depending on the circumstances of the epidemic. Given that nudges related to social norms tend to be so effective, they have to be applied with care. Lately, there has also been an increase in 'sludge,' or the intentional misuse of nudges. For instance, some subscription-based business models that take advantage of consumers' misunderstandings to get them to sign up for paid subscription plans exploit the 'status quo bias,' in which people are likely to continue doing something once they have started. Likewise, certain financial products exploit what is called present bias, or the tendency of some people to prioritize immediate rewards. The government should strengthen regulations on this 'sludge.' It is important to understand the features and limitations of nudges, which have become so ingrained in society, and to make good use of them while evaluating their effectiveness. Fumio Ohtake Ohtake is a specially appointed professor at Osaka University, where he served as an executive vice president in 2013-15. He was president of the Japanese Economic Association in 2020-21. He specializes in labor economics and behavioral economics. The original article in Japanese appeared in the April 27 issue of The Yomiuri Shimbun.
Reuters
24-03-2025
- Business
- Reuters
How artificial intelligence will naturally affect patentability
March 24, 2025 - Just as it is revolutionizing many areas of the world, Artificial Intelligence is also revolutionizing patent law. In recent years, there has been much focus on whether AI-generated inventions can be patented. For instance, in 2022 the Federal Circuit concluded in Thaler v. Vidal that only humans can be an inventor and rejected a patent application for an invention generated by an AI system called DABUS. Less attention has been paid to how AI will affect or even upend determining whether human inventors are entitled to patents. To start, fewer inventions may be patentable as AI capabilities grow. Patents are a bargain authorized by the Constitution — in exchange for inventors disclosing their discoveries to the public in the patent, they receive exclusive rights to those discoveries for a limited period. Amgen v. Sanofi, 598 U.S. 594, 604 (2023). An inventor is not entitled to a patent if the discovery is "obvious" in view of prior art. Jumpstart your morning with the latest legal news delivered straight to your inbox from The Daily Docket newsletter. Sign up here. As the Supreme Court explained in its 2007 decision in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., "granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress." Decades earlier, the Supreme Court explained in its 1945 decision in Sinclair & Carroll Co. v. Interchemical Corp. that "the primary purpose of our patent system is not reward of the individual but the advancement of the arts and sciences." Obvious "inventions" do not advance the sciences sufficiently to justify an exclusive right, because such "inventions" keep others from also doing what is obvious. What is obvious in the era of AI? Obviousness is determined from the perspective of a hypothetical "person of ordinary skill in the art." In KSR, the Supreme Court said that person is "a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton." That person is presumed to know the relevant prior art and to have the common tools used in that field. Moving forward, one of those common tools that the person of ordinary skill will have is AI, and that tool is unlike none that has come before. In prior innovation periods, the advances in mechanization, chemistry, electricity, telecommunications, and semiconductors were the root breakthrough that revolutionized future inventions. For example, Alexander Graham Bell harnessed the advances in science of electricity to invent the telephone. Now, AI is revolutionizing who can do the advances. A high school graduate with access to a keyboard and AI can harness knowledge and problem-solving skills of a room of PhDs in various disciplines. AI leads to more "advances that would occur in the ordinary course" because AI can iterate and optimize techniques. For instance, semiconductor companies have AI tools that combine teachings of various scientific disciplines to design improved computer chips. Biotech companies are using AI-generated models to design and engineer new biological molecules to target diseases, allowing scientists to run millions of simulations at a time to find the most promising molecule to be developed. These breakthroughs may not be patentable because they increasingly will be made routine and obvious by AI. A recent case involving heart monitoring in smart watches illustrates this point. AliveCor sued Apple for infringing patents that involved using machine learning with smart watches to detect arrhythmias. In response, Apple argued the patents were invalid as obvious in view of prior art that taught the use of machine learning to assess ECG data but did not specifically disclose machine learning to detect arrhythmia. The Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Office's conclusion, that using the machine learning taught in the prior art to detect arrhythmia, would have been an ordinary creative step that a person skilled in the art would employ. The inference that a person of skill would combine or use AI with teachings in the art may only grow stronger over time. AI may also lead to stronger patents for fundamentally new technologies. For example, pioneer patents are those which relate to an initial breakthrough in a new technological area. Bell's patent for his telephone is a classic pioneer example — no one had ever seen or knew how to transmit the sounds of a human voice using electricity until Bell disclosed one way to do it and explained it in his patent. These pioneer patents often face the obstacle of sufficiently disclosing and teaching the public how to use the invention claimed. In the 2023 decision in Amgen v. Sanofi, the Supreme Court reiterated a longstanding requirement that a patent is not enabled if it requires more than reasonable experimentation to practice the full scope of the claimed invention. This "enablement" requirement has been the Achilles heel of pioneering patents because an inventor may not know initially how to describe every permutation of an invention, even if she has discovered the basic technological principles that apply. AI is a potential solution to the enablement requirement because it enables others to rapidly experiment with new discoveries. A skilled person could be able to take the principles behind ground-breaking discoveries and use AI tools to apply these principles to their full scope. The biotechnology field provides a good example: Scientists may discover new classes of proteins that target diseases and understand how they work, but at the time of the initial discovery may not know all the proteins in the class that could work. Once a completely new treatment is discovered, AI tools can help by using the knowledge gained from the initial discovery to predict and rapidly test additional proteins that fulfill the same function. AI could help enable a broad claim to the initial discovery by reducing and making routine any additional experimentation needed to make the full scope of the invention. As more is learned in a technological space, the more data is available to train AI, making AI tools more capable at problem solving. Moving forward, we expect AI to have a profound impact on patentability because AI is now a common tool that could evolve into a mandatory part of the obviousness and enablement inquiries. The AliveCor case from March of this year held that a person of skill in 2013 would "use machine learning in connection with data, even if this precise use is not expressly disclosed." For more recent patents filed after the release of modern AI models, the key question for patentability may be simply asking whether AI could solve the problem described by the patent as of the date when the application was filed. This article does not necessarily represent the views of the firm or the authors' colleagues.
NBC News
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
Art created autonomously by AI cannot be copyrighted, federal appeals court rules
A federal appeals court ruled that art created autonomously by artificial intelligence cannot be copyrighted, saying that at least initial human authorship is required for a copyright. The ruling Tuesday upheld a decision by the U.S. Copyright Office denying computer scientist Stephen Thaler a copyright for the painting 'A Recent Entrance to Paradise.' The picture was created by Thaler's AI platform, the 'Creativity Machine.' The 'Copyright Office's longstanding rule requiring a human author ... does not prohibit copyrighting work that was made by or with the assistance of artificial intelligence,' a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said in its unanimous ruling. 'The rule requires only that the author of that work be a human being — the person who created, operated, or use artificial intelligence — and not the machine itself,' the panel said. The panel noted that the Copyright Office 'has allowed the registration of works made by human authors who use artificial intelligence.' Copyright grants intellectual property protection to original works, giving their owners exclusive rights to reproduce the works, sell the works, rent them and display them. Tuesday's ruling hinged on the fact that Thaler listed the 'Creativity Machine' as the sole 'author' of 'A Recent Entrance to Paradise' when he submitted a registration application to the Copyright Office in 2018. Thaler listed himself as the picture's owner in the application. Thaler told CNBC in an interview that the Creativity Machine created the painting 'on its own' in 2012. The machine 'learned cumulatively, and I was the parent, and I was basically tutoring it,' Thaler said. 'It actually generated [the painting] on its own as it mediated,' said Thaler. He said his AI machines are 'sentients' and 'self-determining.' Thaler's lawyer, Ryan Abbott, told CNBC in an interview said, 'We do strongly disagree with the appeals court decision and plan to appeal it.' Abbott said he would first ask the full judicial lineup of the Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case. If that appeal is unsuccessful, Abbott could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the issue. The attorney said the case detailed 'the first publicized rejection' by the Copyright Office 'on the basis' of the claim that a work was created by AI. That denial and the subsequent court rulings in the office's favor, 'creates a huge shadow on the creative community' he said, because 'it's not clear where the line is' delineating when a work created by or with the help of AI will be denied a copyright. Despite the ruling, Abbott said he 'was very pleased to see that the case has been successful in drawing public attention to these very important public policy issues.' AI court fight The Copyright Office first denied Thaler's application in August 2019, saying, 'We cannot register this work because it lacks the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim.' 'According to your application this work was 'created autonomously by machine,' the office said at the time. The office cited an 1884 ruling by the Supreme Court, which found that Congress had the right to extend copyright protection to a photograph, in that case one taken of the author Oscar Wilde. The office later rejected two requests by Thaler for reconsideration of its decision. After the second denial, in 2022, Thaler sued the office in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking to reverse the decision. District Court Judge Beryl Howell in August 2023 ruled in favor of the Copyright Office, writing, 'Defendants are correct that human authorship is an essential part of a valid copyright claim.' 'Human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright,' Howell wrote. Thaler then appealed Howell's ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In its decision Tuesday, the appeals panel wrote, 'This case presents a question made salient by recent advances in artificial intelligence: Can a non-human machine be an author under the Copyright Act of 1976?' 'The use of artificial intelligence to produce original work is rapidly increasing across industries and creative fields,' the decision noted. 'Who — or what — the 'author' of such work is a question that implicates important property rights undergirding growth and creative innovation.' The ruling noted that Thaler had argued that the Copyright Office's human authorship requirement 'is unconstitutional and unsupported by either statute or case law.' Thaler also 'claimed that judicial opinions 'from the Gilded Age' could not settle the question of whether computer generated works are copyrightable today,' the ruling noted. But the appeals panel said that 'authors are at the center of the Copyright Act,' and that 'traditional tools of statutory interpretation show that within the meaning of the Copyright Act, 'author' refers only to human beings.' The panel said that the Copyright Office 'formally adopted the human authorship requirement in 1973.' That was six years after the office noted in its annual report to Congress that, 'as computer technology develops and becomes more sophisticated, difficult questions of authorship are emerging.' Abbott, the attorney who represented Thaler in the appeal, told CNBC that the Copyright Act 'never says' that 'you need a human author at all for a work ... or a named author.' Abbott noted that corporations are granted copyrights, as are authors who are anonymous or pseudonymous. Protecting a 'beautiful picture' The Copyright Office, in a statement to CNBC, said it 'believes the court reached the correct result, affirming the Office's registration decision and confirming that human authorship is required for copyright.' Thaler said that he will continue to pursue his bid for a copyright for the painting. 'My personal goal is not to preserve the feeling of machines,' Thaler said. 'It's more to preserve, how should I say, orphaned intellectual property.' 'A machine creates a beautiful picture? There should be some protection for it,' Thaler said.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
US appeals court rejects copyrights for AI-generated art lacking 'human' creator
By Blake Brittain A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday affirmed that a work of art generated by artificial intelligence without human input cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler's AI system "DABUS" was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted. Tuesday's decision marks the latest attempt by U.S. officials to grapple with the copyright implications of the fast-growing generative AI industry. The Copyright Office has separately rejected artists' bids for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney. The artists argued they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance -- unlike Thaler, who said that his "sentient" system created the image in his case independently. Thaler's attorney Ryan Abbott said he and his client "strongly disagree" with the ruling and intend to appeal. The Copyright Office said in a statement that it "believes the court reached the correct result." Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a copyright in 2018 covering "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," a piece of visual art he said was made by his AI system. The office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be copyrightable. A federal district court judge in Washington upheld the decision in 2023 and said human authorship is a "bedrock requirement of copyright" based on "centuries of settled understanding." Thaler told the D.C. Circuit that the ruling threatened to "discourage investment and labor in a critically new and important developing field." U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel on Tuesday that U.S. copyright law "requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being." "Because many of the Copyright Act's provisions make sense only if an author is a human being, the best reading of the Copyright Act is that human authorship is required for registration," the appeals court said.
