In a landmark judgement , US District Court ruled that AI-generated art work cannot be granted a copyright. Judge Beryl A. Howell, upheld the action of the Copyright office denying copyright registration for the work created by the computer system - Creativity Machine. Developed by US resident Stephen Thaler, this programme was listed as the ‘author’ in the application filed by Thaler.
The court opined that a computer system does not fall under the legal definition of a person and hence cannot be the author of a copyright. The judgement parallels the infamous ‘monkey selfie’ case where a photographer’s claim for copyright vesting with a crested macaque who took a selfie using the photographer’s camera, was denied. The court had then ruled that non-human entities cannot claim authorship of copyrightable works setting precedent that denies copyright protection to works made by AI.
This is not new. Previously Thaler, through his attorney Ryan Abbot, had applied for a patent listing his AI machine as an inventor, which was denied. And he is neither the only one nor the last.
We live in interesting times. Language models have become so advanced we call them Artificial Intelligence. It is becoming harder and harder to define creativity in the age of AI. The complexity increases when these AI models are to be trained on material that is copyrighted.
Another legal hurdle is in the form of AI’s ability to invade Data Privacy at an alarming scale. Fuelled by the two cases filed against OpenAI for its data scraping techniques and another one filed by lawyer and programmer Mathew Butterick claiming that data scraping techniques used by Microsoft, GitHub and Open AI are leading to software piracy.
In India too, the newly passed Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 merely talks about the data processing by an AI model as it allows businesses to store data indefinitely for ‘business purposes’. These are just lawsuits waiting to happen.
Though these practices seem reminiscent of the past, the truth is that technology is progressing at such rapid speeds, that the lines between present and future are blurring. By 2035, AI has the prospect of facilitating around 15% of India’s Gross Value. AI is also making massive strides in the cyber security realm and law enforcement. If legislation does not keep up with the times, precedent will make it. Its just a matter of time…
What do you think? Should art works authored by non-human entities be copyrightable?
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