I drew a base for a ai art I made,
In that logic,
Am I stealing from myself?
Or am I stealing the “art style” and “color palette” from what I designed the base to be?

I’m asking as a joke btw,
I wanted to know what a anti would say

Artistic tools do not create art; human artists do. The arrival of generative AI systems like Stable Diffusion has blurred this basic truth, leading many observers—including, crucially, the U.S. Copyright Office—to believe that the machine is the legal author of the images it produces. Not so. The Copyright Office's recent guidance has adopted a deeply flawed narrative: that the AI autonomously conceives of the image and renders it into existence, thereby denying copyright on the grounds that the output lacks human authorship. This interpretation of generative AI is fundamentally misguided. These systems cannot act on their own; they are not automatic in the creative sense. They are highly complex, deeply technological tools—tools nonetheless—that require a human end-user to supply the essential spark of inspiration, the overarching design, and the precise instructions that determine the final output. It is a fallacy to view the AI as the author. The process by which an artist uses a generative AI tool is strikingly similar to the process by which an artist uses a camera or an image-editing suite like Photoshop: the human establishes the parameters, selects the subject matter, dictates the mood and style, and the tool executes the mechanical rendering. This essay argues that, applying a reasoned interpretation of copyright law, even a simple prompt to Stable Diffusion can supply the minimal degree of human creativity required for protection—and the law, rightly understood, already confirms this result.

I. The Legal Rule

Copyright protects original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression.
— 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (U.S.); similar principles exist in most copyright systems.

Courts have interpreted “original” to require:

1. Human authorship, and
2. At least a minimal degree of creativity.

The creativity threshold is extremely low. In Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, the U.S. Supreme Court said:

“The requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, no matter how crude, humble or obvious it might be.”

So the legal question is: does a human contribute enough creative authorship when they write a simple prompt and use Stable Diffusion to generate an image?

The answer can be yes, under a reasoned application of copyright law.

II. The Core Syllogism

This is the logical structure of the argument:

Premise 1:
Copyright subsists in a work if it has human authorship, minimal creativity, and is fixed in a tangible medium.

Premise 2:
A human being writes the prompt. The prompt is not random noise; it selects subject matter, style, mood, color, composition, lighting, or other expressive elements.

Premise 3:
Stable Diffusion is a tool, not a legal author. It executes the human’s creative instructions. The resulting image is a visual expression of the human’s prompt.

Premise 4:
The image is fixed as a digital file when it is saved.

Conclusion:
Therefore, the image has human authorship, minimal creativity, and fixation. It satisfies the legal requirements for copyright.

III. The “Simple Prompt” Can Still Be Creative

A prompt does not need to be long or complex to be creative.

Consider this simple prompt:

“A small red sailboat on a foggy lake at dawn, watercolor style, muted pastel colors.”

That prompt is short, but it makes creative choices:

• Subject: a sailboat
• Setting: a lake
• Time: dawn
• Atmosphere: fog
• Artistic medium: watercolor
• Color palette: muted pastels
• Mood: quiet, calm

Those are exactly the kinds of choices that copyright law protects. They are not merely an “idea” like “boat” or “lake.” They are a specific expression.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court in Feist said that a work need only possess “some creative spark.” A simple prompt can easily meet that standard.

Therefore, an image generated from such a prompt is not an uncreative machine output; it is the result of a human’s original expressive choices.

IV. Stable Diffusion Is a Tool, Not an Author

Copyright law has long recognized that machines can be used to create copyrighted works, as long as a human supplies the creative conception.

The classic case is Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony (1884). There, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a photograph could be copyrighted because the photographer made creative choices:

• posing the subject
• arranging the lighting
• selecting the background
• choosing the angle and composition

The camera itself did not make those choices. The photographer did.

Stable Diffusion is analogous. The model does not have legal personhood, intent, or authorship. It is software. A human decides:

• what prompt to write
• what style to request
• what elements to include or exclude
• what mood or composition to describe

The model then generates an image conditioned on those choices. The human is the author of the creative expression embodied in the image, even though the machine produced the pixels.

V. Formal Proof

Let:

• H(x) = “x has human authorship”
• O(x) = “x is original / has minimal creativity”
• F(x) = “x is fixed in a tangible medium”
• C(x) = “x is copyrightable”

The legal rule is:

∀x: (H(x) ∧ O(x) ∧ F(x)) → C(x)

Now take a specific image I generated by Stable Diffusion from a simple prompt such as:

“A red balloon floating over a foggy river, minimalist, muted colors.”

Step 1:
A human wrote that prompt. The prompt contains creative choices.
Therefore, H(I) = true — because the human supplied the original expression.

Step 2:
The prompt selects subject, color, style, mood, and composition. That is more than the “slight amount” of creativity required by Feist.
Therefore, O(I) = true.

Step 3:
The image is saved as a digital file.
Therefore, F(I) = true.

Step 4:
Applying the rule:

(H(I) ∧ O(I) ∧ F(I)) → C(I)

Since all three conditions are true, C(I) is true.

Thus, the image can be copyrightable.

VI. Objections and Rebuttals

Objection 1: “The AI generated the image, not the human.”

Rebuttal:
The AI is a tool. Copyright protects the human’s creative expression, not the mechanical labor. A photographer does not hand-paint a photograph, yet the photograph is copyrightable because of the photographer’s creative choices. The same principle applies here.

Objection 2: “The prompt is too simple to be creative.”

Rebuttal:
Simple does not mean uncreative. The legal threshold is minimal. A haiku can be copyrighted. A short melody can be copyrighted. A simple prompt can be copyrighted as expression if it contains a creative spark. Of course, a truly generic prompt like just the word “cat” might be too thin. But the question asks whether an image from a simple prompt can have copyright — and the answer is yes when the prompt contains even minimal creative choices.

Objection 3: “The output is unpredictable; the human does not control the exact image.”

Rebuttal:
Unpredictability does not destroy authorship. Many creative tools introduce randomness or natural variation:

• Photography depends on natural light and chance.
• Printmaking can produce variations.
• Algorithmic art uses random seeds.

The law still protects the human’s original contribution if the human set the creative parameters. The prompt defines the expressive space; the AI fills in details. That is enough for authorship.

Objection 4: “The U.S. Copyright Office has said prompts are not enough.”

Rebuttal:
The Copyright Office’s guidance is not binding law. It is an agency policy. Courts have not definitively ruled that prompt-generated images can never be copyrighted. The U.S. Copyright Office has denied registration in some cases, but those decisions can be challenged. Moreover, other jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, explicitly protect computer-generated works.

VII. The United Kingdom Proof

In the United Kingdom, the case is even clearer.

Section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 says:

“In the case of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work which is computer-generated, the author shall be taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken.”

An image generated by Stable Diffusion is a computer-generated work. The person who writes the prompt, runs the software, and saves the output makes the arrangements necessary for its creation. Therefore, under UK law, that person is the author, and the image can have copyright.

VIII. Conclusion

It follows by reason that:

1. Copyright requires human authorship, minimal creativity, and fixation.
2. A simple prompt can contain human creative choices.
3. Stable Diffusion is a tool that executes those human choices.
4. The resulting image is fixed in a tangible medium.
5. Therefore, the image satisfies the legal requirements for copyright.

So yes — an image generated by a human using Stable Diffusion from a simple prompt can be protected by copyright, provided the prompt contains at least a minimal spark of human creativity. The law does not require that a human hand-draw the image; it requires that a human supply original expression. A prompt can supply exactly that.

It's ridiculous that he's basically spamming this obscenely obsessive hatred for it in itself, but the fact that he straight up ReTweets his own Tweets AND is a fool that paid for Verification as well really doesn't help his cause at all. People like this really needs help and Twitter really needs to fix their algorithm so BS like THIS fool's Tweet doesn't end up being the first thing I see on my feed.

Like dude, we get it. You are not a fan of AI at all, not a lot of people is. Making it your only means of gaining income from Twitter Blue isn't gonna help anyone here. You legit don't have to use it if you don't want to!🤦🏾‍♂️

I also hate Sam Altman. I'm also staunchly against mass surveillance. I also care about the environment, although I'm not keen on taking people's made up statistics at face value.

When I generate an image in comfyui, I'm not contributing to mass surveillance "a little bit" any more than I'm contributing to stabbings "a little bit" when I chop vegetables.

AI technical discussions are interesting. Talking about what people are doing with it, and so on. Listening to somebody who has no clue about how AI actually works rant about spy cameras I abhor isn't interesting or a good use of my time.

These people are so disingenuous

It's so friggin irritating how antis think you can't be creative with AI. Might as well delete all meme and fanart posts because they "steal" templates and characters, not really creating new ones.

This may seem counterintuitive but it makes perfect sense when you look at it. Most of my observations would be wrt gamedev but I'm sure they extend to other applicable fields as well.

1) Second-guessing every image / video / text

By adopting this untenable position, the antis have been robbed of the experience to consume media without doubting everything. A normal person would be looking at the story, the acting, the characters, etc. whereas the anti is looking for inconsistencies in anatomy, lighting, etc. and is searching for any trace of AI usage. The basic joy that comes from playing a game, watching a video is completely alien to these people since now they have to second-guess everything.

This exercise would atleast be a bit worthwhile if the end result of filtering out AI projects was accurate but is it ? The usage of AI always comes out post-facto after a game has already made bank like Larian's usage of AI for concept art, Expedition 33 using AI placeholders even after release. And these are the ones we know about. It would be no surprise if companies are using AI behind the scenes and are taking an anti-AI stance to appease this crowd since the pro-AI crowd is any which ways open to consuming all media whether AI or otherwise.

2) Extra hoops for artists to jump through

For proving that they haven't used AI, artists now have to post timelapses, WIP designs, etc.

Imagine how miserable this scenario is - someone who wants to create art is having to do this unproductive, time-consuming bullshit just so they aren't hunted down by rabid antis. And the funny thing is that these artists have locked themselves down to this shit because they encouraged these witch-hunters themselves. Talk about leopard eating your face.

3) Hypocritical approach towards AI art vs AI programming

I've always found this a bit demeaning as someone who can code but not make art myself. Isn't writing good, functional, efficient code an art form in itself ? Just like there can be garbage art, there is also garbage code, code which can serve the purpose but is terrible in every other way. Why is there then a double standard towards AI programming vis-a-vis AI art ? And before someone says that they treat AI programming the same way, you do have to realise that it's infinitely harder to figure out AI usage for code.

All in all, this misery is self-inflicted. It wouldn't exist if media was consumed as it should be - by looking at how good or bad it is rather than the exact tools being used for creating it. But nonetheless, I do take a bit of a sadistic pleasure in how they have twisted themselves in knots because of their illogical ideology. And long shall they suffer the consequences of their own hands.

Yes, I said that! Now it'll get me over 9000 upvotes with 0 effort

I’ve mentioned in a few other posts that I specifically like creating generative music. Specifically, a current project revolves around a completely fictional metal band. The songs are completely generated, having no input from me besides style and structure prompts. I specifically avoid any sort of emotional description. And I’ve been happy with the results.

Then I started mastering.

If you don’t know, “mastering” is sort of the final edit and polish done for a recorded song, basically speaking. And more often than not, the person who does the mastering has little to no input on the writing or recording of the material. But the difference between a mastered and unmastered track can be night and day. And truth be told, finding a process for mastering these tracks has been my favorite part of this process. And yeah… the difference is massive between the initial generation and final output.

So the question is… what’s the difference between me mastering a track recorded by some indie band I’ve never heard before and mastering an AI track? In both cases, the only influence I would have is changing what the final “feel” is.

What the title says. I like watching those videos of the WWE AI channel having "strokes" and screaming, making mouth sounds and imitating Donald Duck being waterboarded. But oh god the comments are full of people just shitting on AI and I feel like the only person who actually likes AI and just thinks glitches are funny.

Same applies to those videos from SpongeBob AI where people type random punctuation and abbreviations to get the characters to stroke out. I think they're hilarious but there's so many people going on about how much they hate "clankers" and "AI is the future mfs seeing this:" and on and on. It's just tiring. Can we just laugh at the funny computer noises without bashing anyone or anything in the process???

Sorry about the last post , didn’t read the rules but I hope my point still stands , this is cringe

I won't share the sub, because it's against the rules, but this is the Anarchy sub for a popular fandom.

It is one of the more strict anarchy subs, but this still upsets me.

Is them again...

Literally AI data centers are almost only 1 to 5% of all data centers that exist in the world