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AI PRODUCTION AND COPYRIGHT ISSUES

By K. Monisha and D. Abinayashree


This Paper deals with the topic Artificial Intelligence Production and Copyrights Issues in Today’s World of Technology, there is huge Development in the field of Artificial Intelligence in terms of both technological advancement as well as operation aspect. Now AI can be used to produce a variety of creative workshop, like music, films, painting. This has created conflict and confusion regarding the authorship of these creations. Under this, there will be a comparison within different countries whether they have provided the copyrights to AI or the owners, and the reason behind that the decision as this can be ground to amend the law which is already existing. It discusses about who is eligible for brand production. As Copyrights law is substantially concerned with workshop created by humans, and it’s unclear whether AI- generated workshop should be treated the same way.AI workshop can be replicated fluently, meaning that it’s delicate to help them from being copied or used without authorization. This means that it’s important to have clear laws in place to cover the rights of the generators of AI, as well as an effective enforcement system to make sure that these laws are followed. Eventually, the use of AI in creative workshop raises ethical questions about the nature of authorship. But it doesn’t mean that the AI is the author or the creator of the AI who will be responsible for work. So, to make it clear this paper will also mention regarding the same. AI has revolutionized the creative process, but it has also raised a number of brand issues. It’s important to address these issues in order to ensure that the rights of generators are defended and to produce a fair system for the distribution of AI workshop.


a robot hand picking up I letter

An AI is  originally created by programming it but also perform tasks and  produce original  workshop like music, lyrics,  filmland on its own, without  entering any external input by its creator, so in  this way it technically becomes the author of the produced work. It has rapidly advanced in recent years, transforming industries and changing the way we live and work. AI is making a significant change on intellectual property, which includes patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. AI is being used to create new works, analyse large volumes of data, and automate tasks that were  formerly performed by humans.

However, the growing use of AI in intellectual property also poses significant legal challenges. The use of AI raises questions about the ownership and authorship of AI-generated works, the impact of AI on traditional intellectual property legal theories, and the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the era of AI. Additionally, the use of big data in AI and intellectual property raises further legal and ethical questions. Earlier copyright was mainly granted to any original work which has some form of artistic expression. For example films, music, lyrics, books & novels, etc. but now even software can be copyrighted because it is deemed that a software is a programme like a book written in a certain language or code. One of the products of this technology is Artificial Intelligence that mimics the human intelligence to perform tasks which a human would have performed by applying his creative.

 In September New York-based artist and Artificial Intelligence enthusiast, Kris Kashtanova became the first artist to gain copyright protection for artwork generated by AI tools, for their graphic novel Zarya of Dawn, which they created using the text-to-image tool Midjourney.

As he produced an application that his comic book called Zarya of the Dawn, which while assisted by text-to-image generators was not wholly made by programs such as DALL-E and Mid journey. So, the Kashtanova approach towards the copyright office to get AI-image generators as a tool to assist the work was successful because it wasn’t entirely made by AI. Kashtanova wrote the comic book story, as well as designing the layout, and made artistic choices. Kris Kashtanova’s attempt to register their graphic novel, Zarya at the Dawn, the USCO only granted the registration to what it deemed as human-authored elements within the work, but concluded that images in the work that were generated by the AI technology were not the product of human authorship, and not included in the scope of copyright protection in the registration1.


AI artwork and written material

AI art is artwork and written material is created using artificial intelligence machine learning process. The computer comes up with patterns of past work and styles of other artists, as well as descriptions of characters, and puts together images using this information. The data is handed by humans, but the final output is determined by the AI machine2.

It is observed that since 1970s computer generated art works have attracted a lot of attention. Most of these computer-generated artworks are reckoned heavily on the programmer who provides the input for creation of the work. However, with technological advancement, artificial intelligence has developed to the extent that it is capable of understanding and creating outputs without any interference by the human.

Major question raised in this regard, is with respect to the protection over the work created by the Artificial Intelligence. With the existing legislation of Indian IP laws especially copyright, the idea of extending copyright protection to artificial intelligence for works created appears to be difficult. The works created by Al can be categorized as “works created by Al with human interference” and “works created by Al without any human interference”.


Increase usage of ai and its copyrights issues

As the world of technology continues to evolve, one of its most interest part is that, artificial intelligence (AI), has taken centre stage. While these new technologies offer exciting creative opportunities, copyright owners began to challenge AI developers in the courts over the not authoritative use of their copyrighted works for the training of these AI tools. These AI copyright cases could potentially clarify the intersection of AI and copyright law, at least on the input side of this innovative new technology.

In Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre v. ROSS Intelligence Inc.3, Thomson sued ROSS for copyright infringement on new legal search platform which was created using AI. The judgement of court was to consider whether scraping material for AI training purposes from a website in violation of terms of service results in breach of contract liability.

In UAB Planner 5D v. Facebook, Inc.4, Case, it about the claims specifically against Facebook, Defendant Facebook argues that the allegations are conclusory and that Planner 5D failed to allege a link between Princeton's scraping and Facebook because Facebook's mere possession of alleged trade secret information, without more, is not misappropriation. Lastly, confirmed that Planner 5D’s works are data files that cannot be copyrighted as computer programs, as literary works as they lack human authorship, or as pictorial works because they lack originality. This case has to give an important concern as this case gave rise to AI copyright dispute that is between human authorship and ai authorship.

 

Policy Statement on AI Generated work

It needs to fulfil the following conditions:

Insufficient Human Authorship: Based on the Office’s understanding of the generative AI technologies which currently present, users can not exercise ultimate creative control over how such systems interpret prompts and generate material. Instead, these prompts’ function more like instructions to a commissioned artist—they identify what the prompter wishes to have depicted, but the machine determines how those instructions are implemented in its output. For example, if a user instructs a text-generating technology to “write a poem about copyright law in the style of William Shakespeare,” she can expect the system to generate text that is recognizable as a poem, mentions copyright, and resembles Shakespeare’s style.

But the technology will decide the rhyming pattern, the words in each line, and the structure of the text. When an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship. As a result, that material is not protected by copyright and must be disclaimed during the registration process.

Sufficient Human Authorship: In other cases, however, a work containing AI-generated material should contain sufficient human authorship to support a copyright claim. For example, a human may select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way that “the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.” Or an artist should modify material originally generated by AI technology to such a degree that the modifications meet the standard for copyright protection. In these cases, copyright will only protect the human-authored aspects of the work, which are “independent of” and do “not affect” the copyright status of the AI-generated material itself.

This policy does not mean that technological tools cannot be part of the creative process. Authors have long used such tools to create their works or to recast, transform, or adapt their expressive authorship. For example, a visual artist who uses Adobe Photoshop to edit an image remains the author of the modified image, and a musical artist may use effects such as guitar pedals when creating a sound recording. In each case, what matters is the extent to which the human had creative control over the work’s expression and “actually formed” the traditional elements of authorship.

The New Applications can filled by the Individuals who use AI technology while creating a work that may claim copyright protection for their own contributions to that work. They must apply the Standard Application, which is necessary to  identify the author and provide a brief statement in the “Author Created” field that describes the authorship that was contributed by a human5.

For example, an applicant who incorporates AI-generated text into a larger textual work should claim the portions of the textual work that is human-authored. An applicant who creatively arranges the human and non-human content within a work should fill out the “Author Created” field to claim: “Selection, coordination, and arrangement of [describe human-authored content] created by the author and [describe AI content] generated by artificial intelligence.” Applicants should not list an AI technology or the company that provided it as an author or co-author simply because they used it when creating their work.

Amending Existing Applications: The Existed Application can also be applied by the Applicants who have already submitted applications for works containing AI- generated material should check that the information provided to the Office adequately disclosed that material. If not, they should take steps to correct their information so that the registration remains effective.6 

 

Originality of AI

In order to determine what constitutes a creative work eligible for copyright protection, most national copyright regimes rely on the concepts of authorship and originality, among others. There must be creative input on the side of an "author" for a work to be    copyrighted. The Berne Convention, which governs intellectual property rights on a global scale, says that "protection shall operate for the benefit of the author" (art. 2.6), but it doesn't define "author."Similar to this, there is no definition of "author" in the European Union (EU)copyright law, but case legislation has shown that only human inventions are      protected. Authorship is unattainable for AI systems since they lack a personality that they could stamp on their work.

In the case of South Asia FM Limited v. Union of India7, the Delhi High Court examined the issue of whether a song created by an AI system could be considered a work of original authorship under the Copyright Act, of 1957. The court held that the song was not eligible for copyright protection as it lacked the human element of creativity and was the result of an algorithmic process. The court held that for a work to be eligible for copyright protection, it must result from human creativity and originality.

In another case, Ferid Allani v. Union of India8, the Delhi High Court examined the issue of whether an AI-generated work can be copyrighted in India. The court held that copyright protection can be granted to AI-generated works if they meet the criteria for originality and authorship under the Copyright Act, of 1957.


Determining the authorship of ai generated works-who is the author of ai generated works

AI art cannot be copyrighted. The question of who owns AI-generated art is a complex and controversial one. Although AI is responsible for creating works of art, ultimately it is humans who program and train AI algorithms. As a result, ownership of AI-generated art is often disputed between the AI ​​itself, the individuals or companies that developed the algorithm, and the individuals or companies that commissioned or trained the AI.

There are three possibilities to own the authorship:

Programmer

The best and most followed way is to give full copyright to the AI ​​programmer himself. The argument behind this is that AI or more broadly its creation would never have come into being without the intellectual creativity of the programmer, so logically, the copyright must belong to programmer himself.

This practice is commonly followed in countries such as Hong Kong, India and the United Kingdom. This rule is best summarized in UK copyright law, section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA), which states that:

“In the case of a computer-generated literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, the author is considered to be the person who made the arrangements necessary to create the work.”

Furthermore, in the case of Nova Production Ltd v Mazooma Game Ltd9 the UK High Court, in which the copyright of an AI-produced video game was in dispute, held that the authorship of the work is a programmer who "designs the game's interface". different elements of the game". as well as the rules and logic by which it was created and who wrote the corresponding computer program”

AI itself

It is often said that AI should be the sole copyright owner when it creates a completely original work using its own computational intelligence, independent of its creator, but this rule is largely ignored. Banned for two reasons.

First, granting exclusive ownership of a machine directly grants the AI ​​the legal status that allows it to exercise its rights. However, under current circumstances, no country recognizes such rights on the machine. Second, it is an almost universally established fact that copyright can only be granted to original works, due to human creativity and intelligence and the fact that AI He is not human. People should not be able to have the same rights as humans.

 For example, the United States Copyright Office has stated unequivocally that it “will register an original work, so long as the work was created by a human being”. This Copyright Office observation referenced above draws its weight from the case Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc10. in which the court declared that “the fruits of intellectual labour are based on the creative powers of the mind”, therefore only the products of the human mind are capable of copyright protection.

Also in Australia, copyright is only reserved for the creator of an AI machine in the “machine source code”, not for works created by AI without human intervention. This rule arose from the case (Acohs Pty Ltd v UCorp Pty). Ltd11), here the court held that a work created with computer intervention cannot be protected by copyright because it was not created by a human being.

For Nobody

Another common view regarding the copyright of an AI-generated creative work is that it should be considered free, i.e., it has no owner and can be used by anyone, it doesn't matter who, just like Creative Commons.

This scenario becomes hostile for companies as they spend a lot of effort and capital developing complex AI in the hope that one day, they will be able to profit from AI-generated works, but if the works are created by AI, then AI will have no results. License.

 They cannot profit from it. Although this approach can be very beneficial to the public, it does not encourage technology companies to continue investing in a project from which they will not receive any economic rewards, which prevents them from continuing to invest in a project from which they will not receive any economic rewards. seriously hinder innovation.

 

The Collaboration of Humans And AI

The Collaboration of Human and AI are process where the computers and creative process includes like Robotics artists have long been involved in many types of creative work. Since the 1970s, computers have been creating primitive works of art, and these efforts continue today.

 Most of these computer-generated works of art rely heavily on the creative input of the programmer; A machine is, at most, just an instrument or tool very similar to a brush or a painting.

 But today we are in a technological revolution that may force us to rethink the interaction between computers and the creative process. This revolution is powered by the rapid development of machine learning software, a subset of artificial intelligence that creates autonomous systems capable of learning without the need for specific programming by humans. A computer program developed for machine learning purposes has built-in algorithms that allow it to learn from input data, evolve, and make future decisions that can be directed or independent.13

When applied to works of art, music, and literature, machine learning algorithms actually learn from information provided by programmers. They learn from this data to create new work, making independent decisions along the way to determine what the new work will look like. An important characteristic of this type of artificial intelligence is that although programmers can set the parameters, the actual work is generated by the computer program itself – called a neural network – in the process.

 A process similar to the human thought process.


International perspective in the matter of Ai copyright

On the International Level, there has been discussed about the various perspectives in matter related to AI copyright.

USA

US Copyright Office Guidance on AI and Copyright

Faced with the pressing issues raised by the rise of innovative AI, the United States Copyright Office (“USCO”) did not wait for legislative reform in Congress to begin providing guidance to developers. AI development and creation.

 On March 16, 2023, USCO issued instructions for copyright registration:

The work contains artificial intelligence-generated material in the Federal Register. The guidance states that because "copyright can only protect material that is the product of human creation," if "the traditional elements of copyright in a work are machine-generated, that work there is "no human authorship and [USCO] will not register it”

As part of the process of determining whether a work containing elements of human authorship and AI-generated material deserves copyright protection, the USCO asks “whether the 'work' is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine”15

A prominent example of USCO applying this process is its February 2023 decision on Zarya of the Dawn (“Zarya”). Author Kris Kashtanova utilized the generative AI platform Mid Journey to create images to accompany her text for the Zarya graphic novel, applying for copyright protection for the work. In reviewing Kashtanova's application, the USCO concluded that the author does own the text and the “selection, coordination, and arrangement of the work's written and visual elements.”

However, the USCO ultimately ruled that “the images in the Work that were generated by the Mid Journey technology are not the product of human authorship,” and therefore, “Ms. Kashtanova is not the author for copyright purpose of the individual images generated by Mid Journey.” The USCO reasoned that because “Midjourney starts with randomly generated noise that evolves into a final image, there is no guarantee that a particular prompt will generate any particular visual output. Instead, prompts function closer to suggestions than orders, similar to the situation of a client who hires an artist to create an image with general directions as to its contents.”

In addition to considering authorship issues, the USCO has begun to explore the question of the use of copyrighted material in training AI models. On March 16, 2023, the USCO announced the launch of a new initiative “to examine the copyright law and policy issues raised by artificial intelligence (AI), including the scope of copyright in works generated using AI tools and the use of copyrighted materials in AI training.” Over the spring of 2023, the USCO held a series of public listening sessions with creatives, attorneys, AI developers, and other stakeholders.  In late 2023, USCO plans to issue a Notice of Investigation to solicit public comment on AI and copyright issues.

European Union

In its current form, EU AI law will establish a transparency requirement requiring suppliers of synthetic AI systems “not to prejudice Union or national law relating to copyright, A fully detailed summary must be recorded and made public. Use of training data is protected by copyright law.

Japan

For its part, Japan has adopted a very AI-friendly approach to copyright issues. According to a 2018 amendment to the country’s copyright law, “it is permissible to exploit a work, in any manner and to the extent deemed necessary… if the work is used in data analysis…”. This provision is widely understood to mean that under current law, developers can use copyrighted works to train AI models without asking permission from the copyright owner16.

However, future Japanese law may change this standard. The draft intellectual property policy adopted in June 2023 indicates that the government will examine the issue of AI developers using copyrighted material to train models. At a meeting after the bill was passed, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the government would “consider necessary measures, including measures to respond to specific risks such as copyright infringement.”

People ‘Republic of China

In the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), a series of court cases have created a limited space for AI-generated works to be recognized under the country’s copyright laws. In the case of Beijing Film Law Company v. Beijing Baidu Network Information Technology Co., Ltd. (2019), the court ruled that works created solely by AI cannot be protected by copyright. This case was followed by Shenzhen Tencent v. Shanghai Yingxun (2019), in which the court determined that content only partly produced by AI could be protected by national copyright laws. Together, these cases show that courts now interpret Chinese copyright law to only allow protection for AI-generated works if some degree of human participation is involved in creating that work17.

 

The Future of AI Copyright

Ultimately, it is humans who make the final decisions about using machine-generated artwork (to illustrate their articles, for example); therefore, AI clearly cannot grant permission to use the work or hold copyright over it.

Companies that developed and are responsible for AI systems can be sued for copyright infringement. When it comes to AI-generated works, their copyright will not be determined by Indian copyright law. The position of Section 2(d) of the Copyright Act has been repeatedly reiterated in a string of judicial decisions, for example 5 in the case of Tech Plus Media Private Ltd. Jyoti Janda, the Delhi court held that “the plaintiff is a legal entity and is not capable of being the author of any work for which copyright may exist.”18 

A machine capable of learning styles from large sets of data content will become Increasingly better at imitating humans. And with enough computing power, we will soon be unable to distinguish between human-generated content and machine-generated content. We’re not at that point yet, but if and when we get there, we will have to decide what kind of protection, if any, we should give to emerging works created by algorithms intelligently with little or no human intervention.

Although copyright law is moving away from the standards of originality that reward skill, work, and effort, perhaps we can make an exception to this trend when it comes to the fruits of the intellect. Complex artificial intelligence. The alternative seems at odds with the original justifications for protecting creative works. Giving copyright to the creator of artificial intelligence seems the most sensible approach, with the UK model appearing to be the most effective. Such an approach will ensure that businesses continue to invest in technology and know that they will get a return on their investment19


Conclusion

One Part is whether AI can be considered an author. According to current copyright law, the author is the person who creates the work that has copyright. If AI can be considered an author, this could have a number of implications, such as allowing works created by AI to be copyrighted and giving AI the right to sue for copyright infringement.

Next was how to determine ownership of AI-generated works. If AI is considered the author, ownership of the work will likely be determined by the owner of the AI ​​system. However, if the AI ​​is not considered the author, ownership of the work will likely be determined by the programmer of the AI ​​system or the person who provided the data used by the AI ​​system to create the work. 

Ultimately, the question is how to evaluate the originality and creativity of AI-generated works. Under current copyright law, a work is considered original if it is the intellectual product of its author. It’s unclear how this standard would apply to AI-generated works. In general, the copyright issue in AI production can be resolved by establishing some control over its production.20



The authors of this article are K. Monisha and D. Abinayashree, second-year BALLB student.

 

3[Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre] v. [ROSS Intelligence Inc], [1:20-cv-00613].

4[UAB Planner 5D] v. [Facebook, Inc], [3:2019-cv-03132].

7[South Asia FM Limited] v. [Union of India], [99 SCC 3]

8[Ferid Allani] v. [Union of India], [WP(C)7 of 2014]

10[Nova Production Ltd] v. [Mazooma Game Ltd], [(2007)EWCA Civ 219]

11[Feist Publications] v. [Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc], [499 U.S. 340 (1991)]

12[Acohs Pty Ltd] v. [UCorp Pty). Ltd], [287 ALR 403]

13[LEXOLOGY], [https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.amp] [(19/09/2023)]

15[BUILTIN], [https://builtin.com/ai-copyright] [(19/09/2023)]

16[LEXOLOGY], [https://www.lexology.com] [(19/09/2023)]

19[AIPLUSINFO], [https://www.aiplusinfo.com] [(19/09/2023)]

20[LEGALSERVICEINDIA], [https://www.legalserviceindia.com] [(19/09/2004)]

 

This article contains the view of the author and the publisher in no way associates with the views or ideologies of the author. All the moral rights vests with the Author(s).


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