Copyright

Hey,

If you're on this page, there's a possibility that something you've created, using your likeness or an image, is on our website. We're more than happy to assist you with your issue. However, we feel it's important you understand certain things about copyright and ownership concerning AI art and images.

Let's get started.

Firstly, what is 2Moonsai and what's its business model?

2Moonsai began as a simple product created by us for ourselves as designers. We used prompts to generate images for our projects, saving the "good ones" in Excel sheets. Quickly, these sheets filled with over a thousand prompts by multiple designers on our team, and we realized this method wasn't sustainable.

So, we created a small web app for ourselves where we could upload good prompts that were searchable, structured, and categorized. This made our workflow much easier. Soon enough, we shared the project with other designers, and before long, the system had over 5,000 prompts contributed by the community.

Realizing we might be onto something, we transitioned this into a paid subscription model and opened it up for contributors to add their prompts and share in the revenues we generate. This model worked very well, and today we have 50,000 prompts on the platform. In essence, over 500 contributors add prompts daily to our system. Designers worldwide pay for access to our system, and we share the revenue with contributors when their prompts are copied or images are downloaded.

Who owns the prompts and images uploaded to the platform?

In short, no one. But we'll get to that later. We urge our contributors to add ONLY the prompts and images that they have created, particularly using tools like Midjourney or others. However, with hundreds of prompts added daily, it's simply not possible to verify if these contributions were indeed created by the contributors. There's a possibility that some were made by authors other than themselves.

This is a pretty good video for more knowledge on the subject

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsggOAMQX3Q

Let's discuss the laws regarding AI Images.

As of Feb 2024, US law states that there cannot be any copyright on AI-generated work. This applies to the company which created the tool that helped make the image (Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion), the user that created the image, and the person who purchased the image. All AI productions like images, scripts, music, etc., are automatically in the public domain, as they are not produced by a human and hence have no ownership.

So, if you have created an AI product of any kind, the website simply grants you the right to use said production, but no one really owns it.

Here are some articles that provide more insight into the technical side of AI Images:

https://www.google.com/search?q=ai+images+copyright

But why is it that there is no owner of an AI Image?

The law states that for something not created by a human, it cannot be copyrighted unless significant work has been done by a human on top of the produced result. An example would be editing an AI image to such an extent that your work becomes the primary focus over the machine-produced image.

Furthermore, AI image generators train their models on publicly available and, sometimes, copyrighted works of others to create the images. The AI simply uses this data and compiles the image. Thus, all production is "based on" someone else's work or a mix of others' work.

This statement sums it up well:

"In order for there to be infringement, there has to be an author. So, if there isn’t an author, I don’t know that there can be infringement," Heverly told Built In. "If we’re not going to hold the technology maker liable for the technology itself, then the creator of the output is the AI. But we’ve already said they’re not an author. So, if they’re not an author, then they can’t create an infringing work."

Source: https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-copyright

Now, what if your image or creation was uploaded to 2Moonsai?

Keeping in mind that there's a possibility some contributors do not adhere to our terms and upload images created by others, in such a scenario, we can ask the contributor to remove the images or prompts in question. However, beyond this, we really cannot pursue any legal action, as technically they are not breaking any laws per se.

So, will my images stay on the platform?

Here, the situation falls on ethical grounds. If the said image is causing any sort of financial loss, reputation damage, or any other problem for you, we would be more than happy to remove it from our website. We simply don't want to act unethically. We're designers who tried to solve our own problem and understand that these issues could arise for anyone.

In such a scenario, all you need to do is email us at hi@2moonsai.com with the links to your creation, and if it meets the basic criteria, we will be more than happy to remove it from the website.

What if my likeness or name is used in titles or images?

This is a different issue altogether. If you feel that your name or art has been used inappropriately (for example: a painting made in the style of “Artist Name”), please send us an email at hi@2moonsai.com, and we will take immediate action against the creator by removing them and their images from the platform.

We hope to have made AI ownership and copyright issues clearer.

Thanks,

Team @ 2Moonsai