Artificial Intelligence Produced Original Work: A New Approach to Copyright Protection and Ownership

Abstract

The journey of copyright protection that started with the printing press in the 16th century entered a new era of challenges with the technological advancement of the 21st century. Copyright has rights and enforcement that are grounded in legislative enactments. This paper advocates that A. I.-produced work is original and deserves copyright protection. Artificial Intelligence (A. I.) has emerged as a powerful technology that has enabled the creation and assimilation of new and unique authorship. The amount of work that A. I. is producing in the fields of science, medicine, art, law, and literature is increasing dramatically. This paper addresses the question of why A. I. generated work deserves copyright protection and how it correlates with its ownership. A comparative analysis of the existing copyright laws in various jurisdictions is examined. A rundown of current challenges of digital copyright and future developments are discussed. The paper presents the idea of legal personhood and how it correlates with copyright work ownership. Five traditional ownership options are compared and considered. A hybrid ownership model that gives legal personality to the artificial intelligence (AI) system, its programmer, user, and the company under the umbrella of a legal entity like artificial personality (AiLE) is proposed. In most jurisdictions, legislative changes are required to address and provide a new foundation for copyright protection and ownership of AI. -produced original work. Hence, the need to address the current challenges of digital copyright and its rightful owner is essential in unleashing the true potential and further development of A. I.

Original but not human: Assessment of the philosophical foundations for granting copyright to Artificial Intelligence creations

“…To whom this copyright should go is a question that this article does not address, but proposals vary from the programmer (Ginsburg & Budiardjo, 2019, pp. 404-422), the AI as co-author (Hema, 2023), or the creation of new legal entities that encompass programmers, users and the AI itself (Aziz, 2023).…”

Artificial Intelligence as Author of Scientific Publications

“…In general, AI tools, such as chatbots, are not legally subject to copyright (8,15). In summary, it is not an easy decision whether to ascribe AI the possibility of authorship.…”

“…However, we live in a time when AI is developing "[…] autonomous A.I. systems self-learn and can produce creative and intelligent output without human intervention" (8), which may help to shape new ways of looking at scientific authorship in AI. As Polonsky and Rotman aptly point out (7),…”

“…AI faces several challenges in authorship (1,5,(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)20). While AI systems may excel at language generation, one of their key limitations is understanding context.…”

“…Underlying scientific publication is a constant drive to improve the rigor and quality of what is published (4). This is happening in a context of uncertainty, but one in which artificial intelligence is already an increasingly present reality and is rapidly improving, given the growing development of artificial intelligence (AI) based technologies that go beyond the execution of mere technical tasks commanded by humans (5)(6)(7)(8).…”