There are fears amongst some professional creatives that, before we know it, AI will be composing scores and creating songs. However, anyone hoping to make a living using an AI shortcut should think again! We unpack the complex problem of AI and copyright.
The Human Element In Copyright Law
Historically, copyright laws were created to encourage and protect human ingenuity. In many jurisdictions, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, legal frameworks emphasise the role of human authorship as a prerequisite for copyright protection.
The premise is straightforward: Copyright exists to incentivise human beings to create, innovate, and share their works.
However, what happens when a machine, devoid of emotion or intellectual capacity, creates something new? Existing laws on how to deal with such scenarios are unclear, leaving a vacuum in which AI-generated creations reside.
Absence Of Creative Intent
Another factor that comes into play is the idea of creative intent. When a human artist creates a song or writes a classic work or film score, there is a creative impulse and intentionality behind those actions, which are critical in determining the eligibility for copyright protection.
Creative intent plays a central role in the realm of copyright law. It represents the underlying purpose behind an original creation and grants legal protection to the creator. As we’ve already said, copyright law seeks to encourage and incentivise individuals to express their creativity by ensuring they have exclusive rights to the fruits of their labour.
Understanding and respecting the creative intent behind copyrighted works is crucial to preserving artistic integrity and fostering a thriving creative ecosystem. It acknowledges the right of creators to control the use, distribution, and reproduction of their works, preventing unauthorised copying or infringement. By safeguarding creative intent, copyright law nurtures a balanced framework that promotes innovation, rewards creativity, and safeguards the rights of creators.
An illustration of how AI generated content works is to imagine someone going into a public library, cutting extracts from different books on a subject, making those elements into a new work and claiming it to be an original work. AI content is simply a fast way of drawing data from a digital library.
AI, however, lacks such intentionality. It doesn't create with a purpose or emotional drive; it operates through algorithms that process vast datasets to produce outputs. For a work to be copyrighted, the law often requires an element of creative intent that simply doesn't exist in machine-generated content.
Public Domain: A Common Heritage?
Given that AI-generated content is created without human intervention, some argue that these works should be considered public domain. The public domain serves as a repository for works that are not eligible for copyright protection or have expired their copyright terms. In either case, the absence of human creative involvement in AI-generated works leads many to believe they should be freely accessible to everyone, adding to the collective human heritage. There's also a case for the Digital Commons around AI-generated content.
Digital Commons is a dynamic and ever-expanding concept encompassing a vast online space where individuals share resources, knowledge, and information freely. It is a virtual repository where people can contribute, access, and utilise a wide range of digital content, from academic research papers and creative works to open-source software and educational resources. Examples of the digital commons include wikis, open-source software, and open-source licensing.
The beauty of the Digital Commons lies in its inclusivity, as it fosters collaboration and enables global participation. By breaking down barriers to access and empowering individuals to contribute their expertise, the Digital Commons revolutionises how knowledge is created, disseminated, and consumed. It embodies the ethos of openness, collaboration, and democratisation, fundamentally changing the landscape of information exchange in our digital age.
Who Would Own The Copyright Anyway?
Even if we were to entertain the idea that AI-generated content should be copyrighted, another conundrum surfaces: Who owns the rights to these works? Is it the person who programmed the AI, the user who employed the AI to create the content or the entity that owns the machine learning model? This complexity further complicates any efforts to assign copyright to AI-generated works.
The Future Of Copyright And AI
While existing laws seem incompatible with the concept of AI-generated content, that doesn't mean the legal landscape won't evolve. Some advocate for nuanced regulations that acknowledge the human creativity in designing the AI models and curating the datasets they're trained on. Others propose new categories of intellectual property protection specifically tailored to AI-generated works. Whatever the case, as technology progresses, so must our understanding and interpretation of the laws meant to govern it.
AI - Are We Threatened Or Protected?
Clearly, those wanting to make a fast buck creating music using AI had better think again. If you create anything, you presently have no protection from someone else using it, or making money from it. For some who feel AI is a threat to human creativity, this may give you peace of mind. When it comes to the law, human creativity still has greater protection than AI-generated content.
The issue of copyrighting AI-generated content is far from settled. It remains a complex legal landscape that challenges traditional notions of creativity and ownership. As AI continues to play a more significant role in content creation, there's an increasing need for legal frameworks to evolve and address these new challenges.
Whether or not AI-generated works will ever be eligible for copyright protection remains to be seen. However, what is clear is that as AI becomes more ingrained in our creative processes, questions surrounding its role and the legal implications will continue to stir debate and potentially reshape copyright laws for the digital age.
One Final Word
One final word, this is a primer and by no means a comprehensive exploration of the subject of the law around AI generated content and copyright. It is not legal advice and should not be regarded as such. You should always seek the advice of a lawyer specialised in copyright law if you are using AI for creative content generation.