Cheese and AI

For those wondering what might satisfy the Copyright Office's guidance on altering an entirely AI generated work to a degree sufficient to justify a registration as a selection, coordination or arrangement of such alterations, we may have an idea thanks to a registration issued on January 30. The work is entitled "A Single Piece of American Cheese," created by Kent Keirsey, CEO of Invoke, an AI creation platform.  Here is a side by side of the entirely AI generated work (left figure) and the final work for which registration was obtained:



Not much difference, one might say. The Office initially agreed, rejecting the application in August 2024. This conclusion might be heightened by knowing that it only took 10 minutes to alter the initial work to the final one for which registration was eventually made. The prompt to create the initial image was:

fractured glass, faces in the facets ,

surreal pattern of glazed brushstrokes,

spaghetti noodle hair <boldline-soft>

<abstractinvoke> <glowabstractinvoke>”

and negative prompt “blurry, out of

focus, sketch. photo <prophoto>” 


Three different1024x1024 images were generated using an SDXL model called CustomXL.  One of those three images was selected and placed on a digital "canvas" for refinement. The image size was then expanded with additional colors and details added via "inpainting" an AI technique where you "regenerate part of an image according to various settings, like denoising, strength, prompts, models, while preserving other parts of the image." According to Invoke, 

We repeated the inpainting process more than 35 times across a ten minute period, refining existing elements and adding new concepts to the image, like a third eye, the melting cheese, an upper body, and internal organs.

Invoke has a video showing the whole workflow, embedded in a very thorough, fantastic, 17 page "white paper" on the entire process, available here.   I encourage everyone to read it and download it as a valuable resource. It contains an illustrated review of past Copyright Office decisions, as well as a detailed explanation of how the work was created and the Copyright Office's January 30 letter noting registration.

The creative process was documented with Invoke's "Provenance Records" tool, described as


track[ing] and embed[ing] metadata, providing a 

transparent record of user-driven edits.

Users can see models, reference images, inpainting

adjustments, and settings applied to their image.

Each accepted inpainted region is stored as a separate

raster layer, preserving a history of modifications.

Provenance Records is enabled by default for all Invoke

users, with future updates planned to further align with

U.S. Copyright Office requirements.

It was this tool that enabled Invoke to demonstrate to the Office the changes made, that in the Office's judgment met its standard for a sui generis type of compilation visual art.  This registration is not your typical one. Invoke engaged in a very savvy advertising campaign for its platform and tools. The white paper is ingenious. Here is Invoke's statement of purpose:


One of the most important takeaways from this case is how attainable copyright

protection is, if you are using the right tools. A Single Piece of American Cheese only took

10 minutes to create from start to finish, yet it met the legal standard for authorship.

Our goal with this piece wasnʼt to create a masterpiece (obviously). We wanted to see

where the “floor” was for the U.S. Copyright Office to grant copyright protection to an

AI-assisted work.

We know most artists and creative professionals spend far more than 10 minutes on any

individual piece and make hundreds if not thousands of creative micro-decisions in the

process. We hope that those people can now feel confident that their work can be

protected, at least in the United States.

The changes made were to me slight (as was the time to make them), but what motivated the Office's change of heart was Invoke being able to demonstrate the creative choices made in those changes to get to the final image. Few will have the access to the tools (and legal counsel) that Invoke had from the inception to the conclusion, but this should not detract from the valuable service Invoke performed by showing how things can be done.  



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