Comment by SpaceNoodled
1 day ago
Photography was considered pretty uncool; it removed what at the time was perceived as all of the skill. We now can appreciate deeper aspects of captured images such as composition, and we now see painted portraits replaced by more abstract, surreal, or imagined imagery. Generative AI is similarly revolutionary in that it moves away from realism back into the realm of the imaginary; whether or not a user's prompts can be appreciated remains to be seen.
Fun fact: copyright law was invented in the UK basically because painters and sculptors (!) considered photography theft. That came to a large degree before "real" text copyright as we know it today.
> Fun fact: copyright law was invented in the UK basically because painters and sculptors (!) considered photography theft. That came to a large degree before "real" text copyright as we know it today.
This is...not true? Or at least I can find no basis for your claims.
UK Copyright for books and sculpture predated the invention of photography and existed in a completely recognizable form ("a copyright term of 14 years, with a provision for renewal for a similar term, during which only the author and the printers to whom they chose to license their works could publish the author's creations.[4] Following this, the work's copyright would expire, with the material falling into the public domain"[1]).
Paintings and photographs gained copyright protection at the same time, in the 1862 Fine Arts Copyright Act, seemingly because it seemed natural to extend the haphazardly covered fine arts more completely.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne