Legal experts grapple with copyright when it comes to works created using AI

Creating art is a common way for humans to express themselves – and it is usually protected by copyright laws – but what if AI did the same? If a writer used AI to complete Cao Xueqin’s famous unfinished Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, who should own the copyright? Cao Xueqin, the writer, or the AI algorithm?

Photo credit: Health Blog.

“So far, there is no law specifically addressing ownership of AI-created work [in China],” said Liu Wenjie, a law professor at the Communication University of China. “The court can decide the authorship of the content by applying the general provisions of the law or by legal interpretation when there is a dispute. Of course, this can cause uncertainty. ”

Several legal experts who spoke to the Post agreed that AI, at its current stage of development, should not be considered a “legal person” that can own a work.

“It would be quite problematic to give AI the right to own its work legally. To do that, you need to make the AI an independent legal person, which not only has legal rights but bears legal responsibilities,” said Jyh-an Lee, associate professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

There are signs that AI, which China has widely adopted for applications from surveillance to education, will be applied to the creative arts field as well. Earlier this year, Chinese telecoms giant Huawei used AI software, together with human composers, to complete Franz Schubert’s eighth symphony, while Tencent, whose music service is No. 1 in China, announced a partnership with AI music startup Amper.

Spotify’s director of its Creator Technology Research Lab François Pachet also recently wrote on his LinkedIn page that he was developing “the next generation of AI-assisted music composition tools.”

Even so, there are complex legal issues when it comes to AI creating a work.

In the first known court case involving Chinese AI copyright protection, a Beijing-based law firm sued Baidu for infringement after one of the search giant’s platforms reposted a WeChat article by the law firm. Baidu’s defense was that the article was created by AI, so it was not protected by copyright.

The case was heard by the new Beijing Internet Court, which in April held that only works created by a natural person can be protected under copyright law, but added that authorship of the AI-created work in question should still have been protected by law.

“The court’s decision giving authorship to the user of the AI is only from the perspective of promoting cultural communication and the development of science, but it did not point to any legal evidence supporting it,” said Xu Xinming, chief lawyer of the China Intellectual Property Lawyers Net. “This was only a single case and a way for the Beijing Internet Court to explore the legal [dilemma], but the situation is far from mature.”

In most countries, AI-generated work is not subject to copyright protection, so no one should own the work, noted CUHK’s Lee. “[I think] most copyright practitioners and scholars agree with each other on that.”

If a work produced by an AI algorithm or process, without the involvement or contribution of a natural person, does not qualify as authorship, it could create a vacuum in copyright law, argued lawyer Xu.

“A lot of infringements already happen in society, even for content with clear authorship. For content without clear authorship, it could result in a massive number of infringements, for example, from using the content without charge or permission,” he said.