Comment by Animats
1 day ago
What happens if you present an image of a page in some font to an LLM, and ask it to make you a font file for that font? An LLM could probably not only do that, but create matching characters for ones not already present.
Oh, and tell it to fix the kerning.
As a matter of US law:
- Font letterforms are not copyrightable. (Eltra Corp. v. Ringer, 579 F.2d 294 (4th Cir. 1978) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eltra_Corp._v._Ringer>)
- Font programmes are. (Generally 1980 Computer Software Copyright Act.)
- Cleanroom reimplementation of software is not copyright infringement. An AI without access to original source code would likely pass this test.
- As a further twist, it appears likely that courts will hold that AI creations are themselves not copyrightable (original works of authorship), such that the product of any such project would itself be public domain. (See: <https://www.reuters.com/legal/ai-generated-art-cannot-receiv...>.)
The whole scenario appears to open the door to liberation of all fonts for which public letterforms are available. This would be an "AI hole" (analogous to the ... analogue hole) for escaping copyright. Whether this liberation would occur before foundries passed new protective legislation will be an interesting question.
Right.
A good question to work on is whether an LLM, given a reasonable number of characters of a font, can generate letter forms for the entire Unicode character space. Probably. It's a style matching problem, and LLMs are good at that.
That would be interesting to see. An a possible way of extending current typefaces through the Unicode glyph-space.
Thought I'd had earlier: there's a lot of detail that goes into font design, particularly anticipating issues with specific media.
E.g., faces meant for wet-ink print often incorporates features to avoid pooling or smearing ink ("ink traps", see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap>). Electrostatic printing (a/k/a laserprinters), and screen-based displays (CRT, LED, Plasma, eInk) also have idiosyncrasies which fine-detail font design may take into account.
I'm not sure those would be hugely significant, but seem a domain in which a naive AI font designer might prove deficient.