[buildartefact]

Asks for screenshot from movie. Image generator gives screenshot from movie. Who’s at fault here?

[wrsh07]

I keep doing a mental trick where I ask, "what if this were a feature of Google/YouTube?"

I think you're allowed 30s clips (or something) while staying within fair use (see: film YouTubers are able to use some scenes and clips)

Thus, you could imagine a Google that would show you the clip of the movie or link to a 30s scene from the movie and then prompted you to rent/buy the movie to see more.

I think Google would get away with that. I'm not positive or a lawyer.

Is this different because it's still images only? Again, Google shows copyrighted images in its image search (usually thumbnails, and then maybe serves the full image from the source? Or sometimes sends you to the source?)

It's not quite clear to me that simply showing the image is copyright infringement - non generative ai companies do that. So where is the line?

My understanding is that it really should be incumbent on the user (like it would be if your search found copyrighted material) but I don't have a legal basis for that! It just seems like nobody is suing Google for image search.

[passwordoops]

The image generator that provided the screenshot without licensing/permission.

This isn't complicated, we have laws on the books, and I hope legislators learned their lesson after the "Uber's not a taxi company, and AirBNBs are not like hotels"

[usrbinbash]

> The image generator

So if someone makes a forgery of, say, a picasso, who do we blame: The forger or the brush?

> This isn't complicated

This concerns copyright law, which is handled case by case, and deals with very fuzzy definitions like "fair use" or what constitutes "transformative works", and things like "impact in the marketplace".

So yes, this is a very complicated topic.

[fallingknife]

If I go to Google and ask for screenshots from a movie, it will also produce copyrighted material. So you're right that it isn't complicated. Tools with the same capability already exist and are perfectly legal, and therefore, so is Midjourney.

[pylua]

That doesn't look like a screenshot from the movie. It looks like a hypothetical screenshot at different angles.

[Glyptodon]

I don't know. This sort of thing will lead to stuff like recording your own memories requiring a licensing fee if not careful. I also think there's a reasonable argument that the prompter is the one creating infringement.

[crooked-v]

Probably the people who put the screenshot from the movie into the source data of the image generator.