Tag: art

AI-Generated Art Can’t Receive Copyright Protection After Supreme Court Declines Case

The advancement of AI-generated art suffered a crucial blow this week when the Supreme Court left in place a lower-court ruling that such works cannot be protected under U.S. copyright law.

The original plaintiff, a computer scientist from Missouri named Stephen Thaler, appealed to the Supreme Court after “lower courts upheld a U.S. Copyright Office ​decision that the AI-crafted visual art at issue in the case was ineligible for copyright protection ​because it did not have a human creator,” per Reuters.

Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for ⁠a federal copyright registration in 2018 covering “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” visual art he said his AI ​technology “DABUS” created. The image shows train tracks entering a portal, surrounded by what appears to be green and ​purple plant imagery.

The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be eligible to receive a copyright.

According to The Verge, the U.S. Copyright Office issued new guidance last year saying that AI-generated could not enjoy copyright protection, potentially destroying the profitability of text prompts with no original source material. Thaler had also tried to patent his AI-generative works, which has also faced several legal challenges.

“The US federal circuit court similarly determined that AI systems can’t patent inventions because they aren’t human, which the US Patent Office reaffirmed in 2024 with new guidance, stating that while AI systems can’t be listed as inventors on a patent, people can still use AI-powered tools to develop them,” noted The Verge.

Thaler’s lawyers argued admitted that the Supreme Court’s rejection could likely hurt the advancement of AI-generated artworks.

“Even if it later overturns the Copyright Office’s test in another case, it will be too late,” Thaler’s lawyers claimed. “The Copyright Office ​will have irreversibly and negatively impacted AI development and use in the creative ​industry during ⁠critically important years.”

Without copyright protection, AI-generated works would fall under public domain, allowing anyone to copy, sell, or use, essentially destroying the potential to create commercial intellectual property.

Keep reading

Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi

The Indonesian archipelago is host to some of the earliest known rock art in the world1,2,3,4,5. Previously, secure Pleistocene dates were reported for figurative cave art and stencils of human hands in two areas in Indonesia—the Maros-Pangkep karsts in the southwestern peninsula of the island of Sulawesi1,3,4,5 and the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat region of eastern Kalimantan, Borneo2. Here we describe a series of early dated rock art motifs from the southeastern portion of Sulawesi. Among this assemblage of Pleistocene (and possibly more recent) motifs, laser-ablation U-series (LA-U-series) dating of calcite overlying a hand stencil from Liang Metanduno on Muna Island yielded a U-series date of 71.6 ± 3.8 thousand years ago (ka), providing a minimum-age constraint of 67.8 ka for the underlying motif. The Muna minimum (67.8 ± 3.8 ka) exceeds the published minimum for rock art in Maros-Pangkep by 16.6 thousand years (kyr) (ref. 5) and is 1.1 kyr greater than the published minimum for a hand stencil from Spain attributed to Neanderthals6, which until now represented the oldest demonstrated minimum-age constraint for cave art worldwide. Moreover, the presence of this extremely old art in Sulawesi suggests that the initial peopling of Sahul about 65 ka7 involved maritime journeys between Borneo and Papua, a region that remains poorly explored from an archaeological perspective.

Keep reading

60,000-Year-Old “Highly Unusual” Etchings Could Point to Humanity’s Earliest Use of Geometric Design

Evidence of early human use of geometric concepts in prehistoric art has surfaced in southern Africa, revealed in a series of archaeological discoveries that point to complex patterns and repetition in ancient etchings on ostrich eggshells.

The remarkable finds, uncovered at a series of archaeological sites throughout southern Africa, are believed to have been engraved by early Homo sapiens in the regions close to 60,000 years ago—far earlier than previous examples of organized markings suggestive of the use of geometric rules.

The new findings were made by a research team based at the University of Bologna and reported in a study published in PLOS One.

Echoes of Early Geometry?

As the branch of mathematics that involves spatial properties such as shape, size, and relative position, it is known that the Ancient Babylonians began using geometrical calculations to track the movement of planets like Jupiter at least 1,400 years earlier than previously believed.

To compare the etchings uncovered by the team led by Silvia Ferrara, a Professor at the University of Bologna’s Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies, to the capabilities of the ancient Babylonians would be off base. However, evidence of more rudimentary geometric thinking—obvious repetition, use of parallel lines, presence of angles (orthogonality), and other distinctive geometric organization—in the ancient African discoveries is hard to ignore.

“These signs reveal a surprisingly structured, geometric way of thinking,” Ferrara said in a statement provided to the University of Bologna’s Unibo Magazine.

“We are talking about people who did not simply draw lines,” Ferrara adds, “but organized them according to recurring principles—parallelisms, grids, rotations, and systematic repetitions: a visual grammar in embryo.”

An Ancient Tale Told on Ostrich Eggs

Ferrara and her team have hypothesized that the primary purpose of these ostrich eggs was to transport water. Probing more deeply into the curious markings that covered many of the eggshell fragments recovered from a trio of southern African archaeological sites, the team conducted a quantitative and systematic investigation of 112 samples.

Employing statistical analysis and geometric methods of investigation that had never been used for such artifacts before, Ferrara and her team reconstructed the lines and designs on the eggshells.

The results were surprising: Ferrara’s team discovered that more than 80% of the etchings they analyzed showed signs of “coherent spatial regularities” and evidence of repetitive orthogonality, with angles near 90° and angles resulting from the convergence of groups of lines drawn parallel to each other.

Ferrara and the team also point to the complexity in several of the etchings, which include repetitive hatched bands, geometric shapes such as simple parallelograms, grid-like motifs, and other features, which they argue as evidence of complex cognitive operations. Beyond the etchings themselves, the markings reveal evidence of rotation, translation, and repetition by the ancient designers, who displayed remarkable capabilities 60,000 years ago at sites in South Africa and Namibia.

Geometric “Mastery” in Ancient Southern Africa

“These engravings are organized and consistent,” Ferrara said, “and show mastery of geometric relationships.”

“There is not only a process of repeating signs: there is real visuo-spatial planning, as if the authors already had an overall image of the figure in mind before engraving it,” she adds.

Keep reading

Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi

The Indonesian archipelago is host to some of the earliest known rock art in the world1,2,3,4,5. Previously, secure Pleistocene dates were reported for figurative cave art and stencils of human hands in two areas in Indonesia—the Maros-Pangkep karsts in the southwestern peninsula of the island of Sulawesi1,3,4,5 and the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat region of eastern Kalimantan, Borneo2. Here we describe a series of early dated rock art motifs from the southeastern portion of Sulawesi. Among this assemblage of Pleistocene (and possibly more recent) motifs, laser-ablation U-series (LA-U-series) dating of calcite overlying a hand stencil from Liang Metanduno on Muna Island yielded a U-series date of 71.6 ± 3.8 thousand years ago (ka), providing a minimum-age constraint of 67.8 ka for the underlying motif. The Muna minimum (67.8 ± 3.8 ka) exceeds the published minimum for rock art in Maros-Pangkep by 16.6 thousand years (kyr) (ref. 5) and is 1.1 kyr greater than the published minimum for a hand stencil from Spain attributed to Neanderthals6, which until now represented the oldest demonstrated minimum-age constraint for cave art worldwide. Moreover, the presence of this extremely old art in Sulawesi suggests that the initial peopling of Sahul about 65 ka7 involved maritime journeys between Borneo and Papua, a region that remains poorly explored from an archaeological perspective.

Keep reading

ECHR to rule on religious symbols in public buildings

The European Court of Human Rights is currently considering a case seeking the removal of religious symbols from public buildings, the ruling from which could affect public institutions’ ability across the 46 Council of Europe states to display such symbols.

The ‘Union of Atheists v. Greece’ case involves two applications in which the applicants, who identify as atheists, requested the removal of Christian symbols displayed in Greek courtrooms during hearings related to religious education issues.

According to the case filing, the applicant association requested the removal of a Christian orthodox icon of Jesus Christ from the courtroom, arguing that its presence violated the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion under Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Article 14 of the Convention concerns the prohibition of discrimination, stating that enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in the Convention shall be secured “without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status”.

The applicants additionally argued that the presence of religious symbolism in the courtroom hindered their right to a fair trial and brought the court’s objective impartiality into question.

The Greek courts rejected the applicants’ requests to remove the icons, with an argument advanced that in the context of “the dominant Christian Orthodox religion”, the presence of Christian symbolism was a practice which had long been followed in all courtrooms “according to custom and the orthodox tradition”.

The applicants complained that as the subject matter of the trials related to the right to freedom of religion, the rejection of their requests to have the icon removed from the courtrooms infringed their right to an impartial tribunal under Article 6 § 1 (concerning right to a fair trial) and their rights under Article 9 § 1 (concerning freedom of thought, conscience and religion) of the Convention. 

They also claim that there is a consensus among the Council of Europe member states against displaying religious symbols in courtrooms, and that the display of religious imagery in Greece is not provided for by law.

Legal advocacy organisation ADF International has intervened in Union of Atheists v. Greece to argue that religious symbols, including artwork, icons and other Christian imagery, reflecting a country’s history and traditions, “cannot be forced down under a false interpretation of religious freedom”.

Keep reading

Art dealer who told FBI about Epstein’s child porn affinity in 1996 says he threatened to BURN her house down

An art dealer who sounded the alarm on Jeffrey Epstein‘s sickening affinity for child pornography a decade before the FBI investigated the disgraced financier said he scared her into silence by threatening to set her home ablaze. 

Maria Farmer, who Epstein once hired to help him buy artwork, has long asserted that she filed a complaint against the sex offender in September 1996. 

On Friday, the FBI finally released a copy of the document – solidifying what Farmer has been arguing for years. 

‘I’ve waited 30 years,’ Farmer told The New York Times. ‘I can’t believe it. They can’t call me a liar anymore.’

But she said it does not negate the fact that investigators ‘harmed all of these little girls’ by not taking her concerns seriously. 

In the released complaint, which has Farmer’s name redacted, authorities wrote that she had taken photos of her 12 and 16-year-old sisters for her personal portfolio that Epstein stole. 

Farmer, who was 25 at the time, claimed that Epstein ‘sold the pictures to potential buyers’ and told her ‘that if she tells anyone about the photos, he will burn her house down,’ as per the document. 

The now 56-year-old visual artist clarified in an interview that the photos Epstein stole included nude images, according to the NY Times. 

Keep reading

Neanderthals created the world’s oldest cave art

Neanderthals didn’t just survive Europe’s Ice Age landscapes – they ventured into deep caves and made art. What they left isn’t figurative like the later animal scenes of Homo sapiens.

Instead, it is a repertoire of hand stencils, geometric signs, finger-drawn lines, and even built structures. This type of artmaking points to creative intent and symbolic behavior long before our species arrived.

The latest synthesis of discoveries from France and Spain shows that these nonfigurative markings and installations predate modern humans in western Europe by tens of millennia.

The research moves the long-running debate about Neanderthal cognition from speculation to evidence.

Neanderthal art decoded

All confirmed examples so far are nonfigurative – no animals or humans. Instead we see hand stencils made by blowing pigment over a hand, “finger flutings” pressed into soft cave surfaces, linear and geometric motifs, and purposeful arrangements of cave materials.

Neanderthals inhabited western Eurasia from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago and have often been caricatured as the archetypal “cavemen.”

Questions about their cognitive and behavioral sophistication persist, and whether they produced art sits at the center of that debate.

Despite proof that Neanderthals used pigments and made jewelry, some researchers resisted the idea that they explored deep cave systems to create lasting imagery.

New dating work from researchers at Université de Bordeaux has shifted that view. In three Spanish caves – La Pasiega (Cantabria), Maltravieso (Extremadura), and Ardales (Málaga) – researchers documented linear signs, geometric shapes, hand stencils, and handprints made with pigments.

At La Roche-Cotard in France’s Loire Valley, Neanderthals left suites of lines and shapes in finger flutings (the trails left when fingers move through soft cave mud).

Testing Neanderthal creativity

Deep inside the Bruniquel Cave in southwest France, Neanderthals broke off stalactites into similarly sized sections and assembled them into a large oval structure, then lit fires on top.

It was not a shelter but something stranger – and if you saw it in a contemporary gallery, you might well call it “installation art.”

Now that well-dated examples exist in Spain and France, more finds are likely. The challenge is timekeeping: establishing reliable ages for Paleolithic cave art is technically difficult and often controversial.

Stylistic comparisons and links to excavated artifacts can help, but they only go so far.

Aging art in stone

There are three main ways to anchor ages. First, if black pigment is charcoal, radiocarbon can date when the wood burned.

But many black figures were drawn with mineral pigments (for example, manganese), which can’t be radiocarbon dated, and even genuine charcoal carries a risk. The date reflects when the wood died, not when someone used it.

Second, calcite flowstone (stalactites and stalagmites) that overgrows art is a natural time cap. Uranium–thorium dating can pin down when the calcite formed, giving a minimum age for the pigment or scoring beneath it.

Using this method, researchers dated calcite on top of red motifs in La Pasiega, Maltravieso, and Ardales to older than ~64,000 years.

Even at that youngest bound, the imagery predates the first Homo sapiens in Iberia by at least ~22,000 years, and Middle Paleolithic archaeology – the Neanderthals’ “calling card” – is abundant in all three caves.

Keep reading

“Art Must Always Tell The Truth”

Popular artist Banksy created a graffiti mural in London depicting the current state of the UK censorship system using the courts to trample the rights of British citizens…

As ‘sundance’ writes at TheConservativeTreeHouse.com, it did not take long for the authorities to cover the mural and eventually attempt to remove it.

I particularly like the fact the govt turned the CCTV camera, so they can monitor who might visit the scene of the criminal dissent.

Apparently, the British government doesn’t quite see the irony.

Keep reading

New Artwork by British Street Artist Banksy Appears on the Wall of Royal Courts of Justice, in London – Is Immediately Covered Up, as Police Weigh Charges of ‘Criminal Damage’

The Met Police is doing the work of promoting the new Banksy.

For decades, the pseudonymous street artist Banksy, whose real identity remains unconfirmed, has thrived on controversy – and with his last mural artwork, things aren’t any different.

The new Banksy shows a judge hitting a fallen protester with his gavel, and was painted on the front wall of the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

The image was rapidly covered up by British officials.

Daily Mail reported:

“Security guards were seen patrolling in front of a screen concealing the mural now confirmed as being by the guerilla graffiti artist as his latest creation.

He shared an image of it on his Instagram page, after it was stenciled on an external wall of the Queen’s Building but swiftly hidden by large sheets of black plastic and two metal barriers.”

Keep reading

Argentina charges daughter of World War II Nazi for concealing decades-old art theft

The daughter and son-in-law of a Nazi who stole art from European Jews during World War II were charged in an Argentine court on Sept 4 with hiding numerous works, including 22 by French painter Henri Matisse.

The pair came into the spotlight after an 18th century painting stolen from a Dutch art collector was 

spotted in an Argentine property ad in August, only to vanish once again.

“Portrait of a Lady” by Italian baroque painter Giuseppe Ghislandi was missing for eight decades before being photographed in the home of a daughter of Nazi Friedrich Kadgien, who had fled to Argentina after the war and died there in 1978.

Police opened an investigation and conducted multiple raids in search of the painting, only to find 22 works from the 1940s by Matisse (1869-1954), and others whose origins have yet to be determined.

The artworks were found in the Argentine seaside resort of Mar del Plata in possession of members of the Kadgien family, officials said.

Keep reading