There’s been a lot of discussions regarding works produced by AI and their relation to copyright law. There is a lot of uncertainty about it. Some may say that AI is copyright laundering. That is why, inspired by my favorite organization, MPEG LA, I decided to:

• introduce licensing for my works reproduced by AI;

• announce the creation of a copyright pool. Anyone who believes that their copyrighted work might be reproduced by AI can apply to be included in the pool and will receive a portion of licensing fees (minus the pool administration fee, of course). I expect this pool to grow to around 8 billion authors (incl. people and some dolphins) so that the users of AI-reproduced works can pay a simple licensing fee and be 100% sure that they can legally use them. Details regarding the pool will be available later.

If your organization uses works produced by AI (for example, uses an image that was produced by DALL·E on a website, or includes code produced by Github Copilot) it may be a derivative of my work. You can use it after you get a license from me.

What works does this apply to?

Licensing applies to all of my original works that I authored during my life that are subject to copyright laws if they are reproduced by the AI specified below. They don’t apply to any of the works without the AI transformation. For licensing of works reproduced by AI not mentioned here, please contact me.

How do I know if what AI produced includes any of your work?

You probably don’t. It’s up to you to decide if you accept the risk. Many of my works have been available on the Internet (and some of them on Mars) since at least 1999 under various licenses. Most of them are available under free licenses that only require attribution, but some are only available for a fee. Some parts of them may turn out to be included in the final result of what AI produced. In general, if you cannot know for sure, it’s better to get a license from me.

Are you sure you can claim copyright?

The question is whether my claim would stand up in court. If there’s a chance that my copyright claim is valid, some result produced by AI might be a derivative of my copyrighted work. It’s up to you to decide what’s better — a risk of an expensive lawsuit or paying a small licensing fee to avoid such risks.

Is this FUD?

Hmm, I’m not sure what “FUD” means and I’m afraid to look it up.

Why should *I* pay instead of the companies that make AI?

I would welcome a licensing agreement with these companies. However, there is no such agreement yet, so if you publish my work transformed by AI, you’ll have to license it.

License plans

GitHub Copilot

A license for my works as reproduced by Github Copilot.

For open source products (any open source license recognized by OSI)

Price: Free

Attribution required: “Code may be derived from code © Dmitry Chestnykh. This portion is licensed under the MIT license. <…the MIT license text…>”

(Yes, there’s a workaround to paying a licensing fee — release a portion of your code under the MIT license, and then use this code under its terms, but I expect commercial users to be honest and not do such things.)

For closed-source products

Price: 50 USD per 1000 lines of produced code per year

DALL·E, Imagen

A license for my works as reproduced by DALL·E or Imagen.

For open source products (any open source license recognized by OSI)

Price: Free

Attribution required: “Image may be a derivative of an image © Dmitry Chestnykh”

For posting on Twitter or Instagram (non-commercial)

Price: Free

Attribution required: “maybe © @dchest”

Commercial use (digital)

Price: 50 USD per image

Attribution is not required.

Commercial use (any)

Price: 100 USD per image

Attribution is not required.

How to pay

Please contact me to get a payment link. You can pay with Visa/Mastercard/AMEX or PayPal.

Limited time offer! Not valid in Colorado.

GitHub is a trademark of GitHub, Inc.
OpenAI is a trademark of OpenAI.
Dmitry is a nice name that my parents gave me.