A court in Prague has ruled that AI-generated images are not protected by copyright. A company had used the popular "DALL-E" tool for illustrations on its websites and sued downloaders and users of these images for copyright infringement. This has now failed, as Stefan Krempl reports on Heise. The court ruled that such images do not enjoy copyright protection because they do not originate from a human creator.
The plaintiff had argued that she owned the copyright as she had created the image herself by following a special instruction. However, as she was unable to prove this, the court ruled in favor of the defendant.
The court made it clear that a creative adaptation that goes beyond a purely technical adaptation of the image may be necessary in order to obtain copyright protection.
However, you are on the safe side if you create your images yourself using an AI tool instead of simply downloading them from third-party company websites. German copyright law has some special features that were not negotiated in Prague. These include the protection of photographic works.