Category Archives: Technology

AI-Created Images Lose U.S. Copyrights In Test For New Technology

Technology, ,

Images in a graphic novel that were created using the artificial-intelligence system Midjourney should not have been granted copyright protection, the U.S. Copyright Office said in a letter seen by Reuters.

“Zarya of the Dawn” author Kris Kashtanova is entitled to a copyright for the parts of the book Kashtanova wrote and arranged, but not for the images produced by Midjourney, the office said in its letter, dated Thursday.

According to Reuters, the decision is one of the first by a U.S. court or agency on the scope of copyright protection for works created with AI, and comes amid the meteoric rise of generative AI software like Midjourney, Dall-E and ChatGPT.

The Copyright Office told Kashtanova in October it would reconsider the book’s copyright registration because the application did not disclose Midjourney’s role.

The United States Copyright Office sent a letter to Mr. Van Lindberg. From the letter:

“The United States Copyright Office has reviewed your letter dated November 21, 2022, responding to our letter to your client, Kristina Kashtanova, seeking additional information concerning the authorship of her work, titled Zarya of the Dawn (the “Work”). Ms. Kashtanova had previously applied for and obtained a copyright registration for the World, Registration #VAu001480196. We appreciate the information provided in your letter, including your description of the operation of the Midjourney’s artificial intelligence (“AI”) technology and how it was used by your client to create the Work.

The Office has completed its review of the Work’s original registration application and deposit copy, as well as the relevant correspondence in the administrative record. We conclude that Ms. Kashtanova is the author of the Work’s text as well as the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the Work’s written and visual elements. That authorship is protected by copyright. However, as discussed below, the images in the Work that were generated by the Midjourney technology are not the product of human authorship. Because the current registration for the Work does not disclaim its Midjourney-generated content, we intend to cancel the original certificate issued to Ms. Kashtanova and issue a new one covering only the expressive material she created…

…Rather than a tool that Ms. Kashtanova controlled and guided to reach her desired image, Midjourney generates images in an unpredictable way. Accordingly, Midjourney users are not the “authors” for copyright purposes of the images the technology generates. As the Supreme Court has explained, the “author” of a copyrighted work is the one “who has actually formed the picture,” the one who acts as “the inventive or master mind.” … A person who provides text prompts to Midjourney does not “actually form” the generated images and is not the “master mind” behind them…

…Nor does the Office agree that Ms. Kashtanova’s use of textual prompts permits copyright protection of restyling images because the images are the visual representation of “creative, human-authored prompts.” Because Midjourney starts with randomly generated noise that evolves into a final image, there is no guarantee that a particular prompt will generate any particular visual output. Instead, prompts function closer to suggestions than orders, similar to its contents…”

In my opinion, this decision is a huge win for all of the artists whose work Midjourney was given to iterate upon. From what I’ve read, the artists whose work Midjourney was trained on were not asked permission for use of their artwork by Midjourney, (or other AI art programs), and certainly were not paid for the use of their work.

I fully agree that Ms. Kashtanova wrote the text of her comic book herself. However, she should not have relied entirely on Midjourney to create the images in her comic book. There are plenty of human artists out there whom she could have hired instead.

FTC Launched New Office Of Technology To Bolster Agency’s Work

Technology,

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission FTC) posted a press release titled: “FTC Launches New Office of Technology to Bolster Agency’s Work”. From the press release:

The Federal Trade Commission today launched a new Office of Technology that will strengthen the FTC’s ability to keep pace with technological challenges in the digital marketplace by supporting the agency’s law enforcement and policy work.

“For more than a century, the FTC has worked to keep pace with new markets and ever-changing technologies by building internal expertise,” said Chair Lina M. Khan. “Our office of technology is a natural next step in ensuring we have the in-house skills needed to fully grasp evolving technologies and market trends as we continue to tackle unlawful business practices and protect Americans.”

The Office of Technology will have dedicated staff and resources, and will be headed by Chief Technology Officer Stephanie T. Nguyen.

Here is what the Office of Technology will do:

Strengthen and support law enforcement investigations and actions: The office will support FTC investigations into business practices and the technologies underlying them. This includes helping to develop appropriate investigative techniques, assisting in the review and analysis of data and documents received in investigations, and aiding in the creation of effective remedies.

Advise and engage with staff and the Commission on policy and research initiatives: The office will work with FTC staff and the Commission to provide technological expertise on non-enforcement actions including 6(b) studies, reports, requests for information, policy statements, congressional briefings, and other initiatives.

Highlight market trends emerging technologies that impact the FTC’s work: The office will engage with the public and external stakeholders through workshops, research conference, and consultations and highlight key trends and best practices.

The Washington Post reported that the FTC has long been dwarfed by Silicon Valley titans like Google and Apple, each staffed with thousands of engineers and technologists.

According to The Washington Post, FTC leaders are hoping combining and expanding their forces into a dedicated tech unit will help keep up with the rapid advancements across the industry – and to keep it in check.

The Washington Post also reported that the FTC’s announcement arrives at a critical juncture. Federal regulators are dialing up investigations into tech behemoths like Amazon and waging blockbuster legal battles against Microsoft and Facebook company Meta.

The agency voted to approve the office’s creation in a 4-0 vote Thursday. It marks the first vote by Republican Commissioner Christine Wilson made public since she announced plans to “soon” retire from the agency on Thursday.

reported that the FTC has long been dwarfed by Silicon Valley titans like Google and Apple, each staffed with thousands of engineers and technologists.

According to The Washington Post, FTC leaders are hoping combining and expanding their forces into a dedicated tech unit will help keep up with the rapid advancements across the industry – and to keep it in check.

The Washington Post also reported that the FTC’s announcement arrives at a critical juncture. Federal regulators are dialing up investigations into tech behemoths like Amazon and waging blockbuster legal battles against Microsoft and Facebook company Meta.

The agency voted to approve the office’s creation in a 4-0 vote Thursday. It marks the first vote by Republican Commissioner Christine Wilson made public since she announced plans to “soon” retire from the agency on Thursday.

Personally, I’m not entirely clear on how this all shakes out. I’m going to guess that the new office will give the FTC the ability to keep up with Google and Apple (among other tech companies) and perhaps enact sanctions if a huge company is doing something egregious.

Xiaomi Opens Store in Birmingham, UK

smartphone, Technology

Xiaomi Logo - an orange squircle with stylised white MI lettersIt might be the season to be jolly but it also seems to be the season for new stores. Following on from Nothing’s new bricks’n’mortar shop in London last weekend, Xiaomi are opening a new place in Birmingham, England.

Xiaomi’s latest pad is at 23 New Street, only a few minutes walk from the train station and Birmingham’s famous Bull Ring shopping centre. Opening today, 18th December, there will be all kinds of special offers as you’d expect for a grand opening from company well-know for its keenly priced products. This is their second UK store alongside the London shop at Westfield, White City.

In addition to usual smartphones, tablets, earbuds and smart watches, Xiaomi produce a wide range of other gadgets and gear; everything from luggage and scooters to air purifiers and air fryers. The Xiaomi portfolio is amazingly wide – it’s a gadget-lover’s heaven.

I was impressed with the Xiaomi Mi 12 smartphone when I reviewed it back in the summer – a good device at good price. Hopefully I’ll get a look at the 13-series when they’re available in Europe.

So if you are still struggling to find a gift for someone who’s hard to buy for, it might be worth a trip into Birmingham.

China Brings WTO Case Against U.S. Chip Export Curbs

Technology, ,

China initiated a dispute against the U.S. at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over Washington’s sweeping semiconductor export curbs that look to cut the world’s second-largest economy off from high-tech components, CNBC reported.

According to CNBC, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce confirmed the trade dispute in a statement on Monday and accused the U.S. of abusing export control measures and obstructing normal international trade in chops and other products. It said the WTO dispute is a way to address China’s concerns through legal means.

In October, the U.S. imposed new export restrictions on advanced semiconductors and chip-manufacturing equipment in an effort to prevent American technology from advancing China’s military power. The rules would require U.S. chip makers to obtain a license from the Commerce Department to export certain chips used in artificial-intelligence, calculations and supercomputing – crucial technologies for modern weapons systems, senior administration officials said.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing will use the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism to challenge U.S. export controls on products such as chips to China to defend its rights and interests, its Ministry of Commerce said in a statement posted to its website. The ministry said it was responding to a media question in making the announcement.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the rules being challenged require U.S. chip makers to obtain a license from the Commerce Department to export certain chips used in advanced artificial-intelligence calculations and super-computing. Biden administration officials have said the rules are needed to prevent China from building up its military and developing new, state-of-the-art weaponry.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that a spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative confirmed that the U.S. has received a request for consultations from the People’s Republic of China related to certain U.S. actions affecting semiconductors. “As we have already communicated to the PRC, these targeted actions relate to national security, and the WTO is not the appropriate forum to discuss issues related to national security,” he said.

Reuters reported that the regulations made by the U.S. aimed at kneecapping China’s semiconductor industry, prompting a complaint from a top China trade group.

“China takes legal actions within the WTO framework as a necessary way to address our concerns and to defend our legitimate interests,” said a statement by China’s commerce ministry, its diplomatic mission in Geneva relayed.

According to Reuters, the so-called request for consultations is the first step in a long procedure at the global trade body. The United States has blocked appointments to the WTO’s top ruling body on trade disputes, meaning some rows never get settled.

It sounds like the complaint made by China is going to languish at the WTO, especially since the request appears to have a long procedure attached to it before a decision is made. As such, China shouldn’t assume that they are going to get “next-day-service” from the World Trade Organization.

Stability.AI Released Stable Diffusion 2.0

Technology, ,

articulated figure looking at a tablet by Brent Jordan on UnsplashStability.AI announced its open-source release of Stable Diffusion Version 2. According to Stability.AI, the original Stable Diffusion V1 led by CompVis changed the nature of open source AI models and spawned hundreds of other models and innovations worldwide. It had one of the fastest climbs to 10K Github stars of any software, rocketing through 33K stars in less than two months.

Stable Diffusion 2.0 delivers a number of big improvements and features versus the original V1 release. Features and Improvements include:

New Text-to-Image Diffusion Models

The Stable Diffusion 2.0 release includes robust text-to-image models trained using a brand new encoder (OpenCLIP), developed by LAION with support from Stability AI, which greatly improves the quality of the generated images compared to earlier V1 releases. The text-to-image models in this release can generate images with default resolutions of both 512×512 pixels and 768×768 pixels.

These models are trained on an aesthetic subset of LAION-5B dataset created by the DeepFloyd team at StabilityAI, which is then filtered to remove adult content using LAION’s NSFW filter.

Super-resolution Upscaler Diffusion Models

Stable Diffusion 2.0 also includes an Upscaler Diffusion model that enhances the resolution of images by a factor of 4. Combined with their text-to-image models, Stable Diffusion 2.0 can now generate images with resolutions of 2048×2048 – or even higher.

Other new features and improvements include: Depth-to-Image Diffusion Model and an Updated Inpainting Diffusion Model.

The Verge reported that users of the AI image generator Stable Diffusion are angry about an update to the software that “nerfs” its ability to generate NSFW output and pictures in the style of specific artists.

StabilityAI, the company that funds and disseminates the software, announced its update. It re-engineers key components of the model and improves certain features like upscaling (the ability to increase the resolution of images) and in-painting (context-aware editing). But, the changes also make it harder for Stable Diffusion to generate certain types of images that have attracted both controversy and criticism. These include nude and pornographic output, photorealistic pictures of celebrities, and images that mimic the artwork of specific artists.

According to The Verge, unlike rival models like OpenAI’s DALL-E, Stable Diffusion is open source. This allows the community to quickly improve on the tool and for developers to integrate it into their products free of charge. But it also means Stable Diffusion has fewer constraints in how its used, and as a consequence, has attracted criticism. Some artists are upset that an AI was trained on their artwork without their consent and can now reproduce their styles.

The Verge also reported that nude and pornographic images have been removed from Stable Diffusion’s training data. AI image generators are already being used to generate NSFW output, including both photorealistic and anime-style pictures. However, these models can also be used to generate NSFW imagery resembling specific individuals (known as non-consensual pornography) and images of child abuse.

CNET reported that AI-art technology creates images based on text prompts. It then feeds those prompts into a program that’s designed to recognize patterns in immense quantities of real-world data. The result is upending the art and tech worlds, where AI-generated imagery and videos have raised questions about what constitutes art and who should own a copyright to it.

Overall, I think AI-generated art is bad for artists. It means that people will immediately go to one of the many AI-art models, type in what they are looking for, and use the generated image that they prefer from what the AI shows them. People will take the lazy way out and grab something from an AI when they could be getting better work from real-world, human, artists, who deserve payment for their work.

China’s Chip Industry Set For “Deep Pain” From U.S. Export Controls

Technology

Two years after the US hit Huawei with harsh sanctions, the Chinese technology group’s revenue has dropped, it has lost its leadership position in network equipment and smartphones and its founder has told staff that the company’s survival is at stake, Financial Times reported. Now, China’s entire chip industry is bracing for similar pain as Washington applies the tool tested on Huawei much more broadly.

Recently, the Biden Administration imposed new export restrictions on advanced semiconductors and chip-manufacturing equipment in an effort to prevent American technology from advancing China’s military power. Those restrictions require licenses for exports of many advanced technologies to Chinese entities deemed to be working against the U.S. national security interests.

Financial Times also reported that Washington is barring US citizens or entities from working with Chinese chip producers except with specific approval. The package also strictly limits exports to China of chip manufacturing tools and technology that Chinese companies could use to develop their own equipment.

The controls on semiconductor equipment are also a potent weapon against mainstream manufacturers and leading-edge chip producers, Financial Times reported. According to analysts at the Bank of America, the equipment restrictions will affect logic chips designed in the past four to five years and Dram chips designed after 2017.

Bloomberg reported that since advanced semiconductors power information-age societies, the U.S. is seeking to hinder Chinese economic dynamism and military alike. Washington’s new policy is a warning to Beijing about the long reach of U.S. power in a globalized economy. It also reflects a sobering recognition that the US can’t win its competition with China simply by running faster; it must also slow Beijing down.

According to Bloomberg, this isn’t the first time Washington has used its influence on semiconductor supply chains as a geo-economic weapon. Beginning under President Trump, Washington sought to kneecap the Chinese tech behemoth Huawei Technologies Co. by denying it the cutting-edge chips it needed to dominate the world’s 5G telecommunications networks.

But that was a very targeted denial campaign meant to cripple a specific company that represented an extraordinary national security threat. The new approach is broader: It is technological containment, pure and simple.

Overall, it sounds like China is going to have a difficult time obtaining the chips it needs for manufacturing, which is the intended purpose of the U.S. exports restrictions. The Biden administration appears to be taking things much farther than the Trump administration did. I think Bloomberg got it right when stating that the U.S. can’t win against China by running faster – it needs to slow Beijing down.

U.S. Restricts Semiconductor Exports

Technology,

The U.S. imposed new export restrictions on advanced semiconductors and chip-manufacturing equipment Friday in an effort to prevent American technology from advancing China’s military power, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The rules will require U.S. chip makers to obtain an license from the Commerce Department to export certain chips used in advanced artificial-intelligence calculations and supercomputing – crucial technologies for modern weapons systems, senior administration officials said.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. already requires licenses for exports of many advanced technologies to Chinese entities deemed to be working against U.S. national-security interests. Friday’s move expands that to include exports of crucial cutting-edge chips and equipment that can’t be obtained elsewhere. The rule will allow the U.S. to block foreign-made chips that are manufactured with U.S. technology, the officials said.

The restrictions are some of the broadest the U.S. has ever enacted against China’s chip industry, veering from previous actions that often targeted individual companies and a narrower subset of technology.

The New York Times reported that the Biden Administration on Friday announced sweeping new limits on the sale of semiconductor technology to China, a step aimed at crippling Beijing’s access to critical technologies that are needed from everything from supercomputing to guiding weapons.

According to The New York Times, the moves are the clearest sign yet that a dangerous standoff between the world’s two major superpowers is increasingly playing out in the technological sphere, with the United States trying to establish a stranglehold on advanced computing and semiconductor technology that is essential to China’s military and economic ambitions.

The New York Times also reported that companies will no longer be allowed to supply advanced computing chips, chip-making equipment and other products to China unless they receive a special license. Most of those licenses will be denied, though certain shipments to facilities operated by U.S. companies or allied countries will be evaluated case by case, a senior administration official said in a briefing Thursday.

The Verge reported that the decision follows months of increased investment by the U.S. in domestic and semiconductor manufacturing. In August, President Joe Biden signed the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act, providing $52 billion in subsidies to boost companies choosing to build chip manufacturing plants in the U.S.

Overall, this seems like a good plan for the United States. It appears that the CHIPS bill is intended to encourage American companies to make chips here at home, while also making it harder for China to obtain chips made in the United States.