Copyright protection for AI-generated outputs: The experience from China

In the current digital background, infringement of news works has become a common phenomenon, and the traditional copyright protection measures have failed to meet the needs of the times. This paper will analyze the current research on blockchain in copyright protection at home and abroad, analyze the problems of news copyright protection in China, and explore a news copyright protection initiative suitable for China's national conditions.

The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed the creation of literary, artistic, and musical works, challenging conventional legal frameworks that tie copyright protection to human authorship. In Tanzania, the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act [Cap. 218 R.E. 2023] defines an author strictly as a “natural person,” thereby excluding autonomously works generated with the assistance of AI from copyright protection. This exclusion raises significant legal, economic, and technological concerns, particularly as AI continues to influence creative industries. This paper examines Tanzania’s copyright legal framework for protecting works generated with the assistance of AI. Using doctrinal legal research methodologies, the study evaluates international legal instruments, including the Berne Convention and the TRIPS Agreement, and legal practices in jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom. Jurisdictions offer diverse approaches, ranging from strict human authorship requirements to recognition of copyright in computer-generated works under specific conditions. The paper is guided by theoretical frameworks, including the Romantic, Lockean, Utilitarian, and Personality theories of copyright. These are used to analyse whether the justifications for human-centred copyright law can extend to AI-generated creativity. The study indicates that Tanzania’s legal framework does not accommodate the evolving nature of authorship brought about by AI technologies, thereby creating a gap in protection, enforcement, and innovation. The study suggests that Tanzania’s current framework is insufficient to address the evolving nature of AI authorship. The study proposes a reform that updates the definition of authorship to encompass human-AI collaborative works. These reforms would align Tanzania’s copyright system with global trends, encourage technological creativity, and provide fair legal protection in the digital age.

The issue of image copyright infringement is prevalent in current e-commerce activities. Users employ methods such as image cropping, compression, and noise addition, making it difficult for traditional copyright detection technologies to identify and track infringements. This study proposes an image copyright registration, protection, and management method based on artificial intelligence and blockchain technology, aiming to address the current challenges of low accuracy in digital copyright infringement judgment, the vulnerability of image fingerprints stored on the chain to tampering, the complexity of encryption algorithms and key acquisition methods through contract calls, and the secure storage of image information during data circulation. The research combines artificial intelligence technology with traditional blockchain technology to overcome the inherent technical barriers of blockchain. It introduces an originality detection model based on deep learning technology after conducting both off-chain and on-chain detection of unidentified images, providing triple protection for digital image copyright infringement detection and enabling efficient active defense and passive evidence storage. Additionally, the study improves upon the traditional image perceptual hashing in blockchain, which has poor robustness, by adding chaotic encryption sequences to protect the image data on the chain, and its effectiveness has been verified through experiments. Ultimately, the research hopes to provide e-commerce entities with an effective and feasible digital copyright protection and management solution, safeguarding their intellectual property rights and fostering a legal and reasonable competitive environment in e-commerce.

The use of computer programs in human intellectual work has attracted the attention of lawyers in the field of copyright since the very beginning. Even though to this day not all discussions regarding the role of a computer program in the creation of an author’s work have been resolved, it is an indisputable fact that a computer or a computer program in the process of creating a mental creation is nothing more than a tool for work, i.e., a mean of expressing the intellectual sphere of human being. Unlike previous forms of computer technology, artificial intelligence is capable of autonomously selecting, systematizing, and generating new content within a database (which can be quite large). Bearing in mind the representation of creations of artificial intelligence systems on the market of cultural, artistic, entertainment and similar content, which is traditionally protected by copyright protection, the question of the copyright framework for the use of such creations is of particular importance. The problem of authorship is posed as an initial one. In the copyright sense of the word, the author as the subject of copyright has numerous rights (of a moral and economic nature) by the exercise of which he achieves a financial benefit, that is, he protects his personal and property interests in connection with his intellectual creation. On the other hand, for users of the creative or entertainment content, the question of the subject of the right is relevant to determine the person whose consent is required if an action covered by exclusive right is undertaken, if such content would be subject to copyright (or some other) protection. In the context of copyright, the analysis starts from the key question of whether the creation of artificial intelligence is a work of authorship, based on which copyright arises, and only then, if the answer is affirmative, who is the subject of copyright. In this regard, our research should answer an essential question: does the existing framework of copyright protection include creations created using artificial intelligence systems?

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.

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has introduced significant legal challenges to copyright protection in Malaysia. Currently, there are no specific laws addressing AI-generated content. The Malaysia Copyright Act 1987 provides a framework for protecting the rights of copyright owners while promoting creativity and innovation. However, it does not adequately address the complexities associated with works created by AI. The main issue in this context is the question of authorship and ownership, particularly whether autonomously created AI works can qualify for copyright protection under the Copyright Act 1987. Furthermore, the lack of judicial precedents leaves many questions unresolved regarding the rights of AI developers and those who input prompts into AI systems Additionally, issues related to originality and the potential for copyright infringement during AI training processes add to the complexity. The challenge of determining whether AI-generated works can be classified as original creations under current laws emphasizes the need for reform. Thus, this paper aims to analyse the legal challenges associated with AI-generated content under Malaysian copyright law and propose pathways for reform to ensure the country remains competitive in the global AI landscape while safeguarding the rights of creators and innovators. A qualitative approach was employed, which included a review of existing literature such as journal articles and legal analyses. The findings of this study suggest that as Malaysia continues to adopt AI technologies, establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework is essential to address these challenges while protecting intellectual property rights.

Copyright Protection in China

Chinese Literature and Copyright Protection in China

The article is devoted to highlighting problematic aspects of the implementation of artificial intelligence in the field of jurisprudence, in particular, in certain branches of law. Due to the rapid development of neural network capabilities, artificial intelligence is a tool for quickly completing tasks and processing information in various spheres of society, including in jurisprudence. Therefore, for a comprehensive analysis, it is necessary to identify problem areas for the implementation of such a phenomenon. It is noted that today there is no unified approach to defining the concept of artificial intelligence. The authors provide several definitions of this concept for the most complete understanding of the essence of artificial intelligence. The legislation does not contain a normative legal act dedicated to the issue of the essence and procedure for using artificial intelligence, which gives rise to such dilemmas. Despite the widespread use of artificial intelligence capabilities among citizens, there is a lack of interest, funding and development of educational methods for the effective use of artificial intelligence in professional activities on the part of government authorities. It is also stated that the introduction of artificial intelligence into professional activities requires staffing with specialists who can service the software. The problems of introducing artificial intelligence in the field of legal proceedings are analyzed. The use of artificial intelligence by courts risks undermining the autonomy of courts and the independence of judges. Artificial intelligence is not able to comprehensively evaluate evidence and make decisions based on moral standards. The issues of transparency of courts, guaranteeing fundamental human rights and freedoms, and software reliability remain open. The legal status of artificial intelligence in civil law is considered. Since artificial intelligence is capable of creating a work, questions remain regarding the protection of copyrights using artificial intelligence and legal liability in case of copyright infringement. A debatable and controversial topic is the definition of artificial intelligence as a subject or object in a civil legal relationship. It has been determined that the introduction of artificial intelligence in criminal proceedings can become a factor in increasing cyber attacks on the neural network with the aim of stealing, destroying, and making data public.

The article is devoted to the determination of the legal principles of the use of artificial intelligence in the implementation of administrative proceedings in Ukraine and the formation of the author's vision regarding their classification. It was considered in which international normative documents in one way or another the issue of using artificial intelligence in the administration of justice was regulated. In particular, it was established that the absence of a direct prohibition in the norms of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights) regarding the use of artificial intelligence in the administration of justice does not exclude the possibility of using these advanced technologies during the administration of justice. Particular attention is paid to the provisions of the Resolution on intellectual property rights for the development of artificial intelligence technologies, in the provisions of which there is a clear principle of distinguishing the features of the protection of creations created by humans with the help of artificial intelligence, and creations created by artificial intelligence itself. Attention is focused on certain norms of the European Ethical Charter regarding the use of artificial intelligence in judicial systems and their environment, and the main principles established in it, which must be followed in the field of artificial intelligence and justice, are listed. It has been found out which documents of the current national legal framework regulate to one degree or another the issues of using artificial intelligence in the process of administrative proceedings. It was established that the exclusion of the possibility of transfer of powers from the consideration and resolution of certain legal disputes by judges, as a constitutional principle of the administration of justice, does not directly indicate the prohibition of the use of artificial intelligence in the administration of justice by them, but on the contrary, it should effectively help in this process and contribute to the optimization of the work of the courts . Some norms of the legislation on copyright are analyzed in order to solve the question of whether the results of the functioning of artificial intelligence fall under the protection of copyright. It is emphasized that the use of information technologies in the form of artificial intelligence is subject to the national legislation on copyright. When studying the national legislation on administrative proceedings, it was concluded that the absence of a direct rule on the prohibition of the use of artificial intelligence in the implementation of administrative proceedings indicates the possibility of using these latest information technologies in this process. The main provisions of the Concept of the development of artificial intelligence in Ukraine, operating in Ukraine, were considered, as a result of which a normative definition of the term "artificial intelligence" was provided and the main tasks of the development of artificial intelligence in the field of justice were reflected. Key words: legal principles, justice, administrative proceedings, artificial intelligence, information technologies.

This paper is based on a presentation given in December 2019 at the Lund’s University conference ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Protection and Intellectual Property in a European context’. The purpose of this article is to analyse the suitability of the copyright system over Machine Learning (ML) models, the so-called ‘core components’ of ML systems. Computer programs protection has always caused certain difficulties for intellectual property law. Internationally, agreement was reached in the 1970s to protect computer programs as literary works of copyright. ML models have been called ‘learning algorithms’, ‘AI computer programs’, and ‘software 2.0’. Yet there is no unanimity about what they are technically. This is relevant from a copyright perspective, because the regime of protection granted by copyright will be different depending on whether the ML model qualifies as a computer program, as a mathematical method, or as another type of work. Additionally, all proprietary and open source software licensing relies on copyright protection. In most open licenses, the license is not triggered if it is applied to something that is not protected by copyright (or related rights). Thus, it seems pertinent to question whether EU copyright law provides adequate protection for the core components of machine learning systems, the ML models.

The dominant explanatory/justificatory framework informing scholarly commentary on copyright law, policy and theory today – certainly in the US – is law and economics. From this perspective, copyright law exists to underpin markets in certain categories of ‘information good’ (copyright works). These markets in turn function to ensure that the private costs and benefits of information production and consumption line up (more or less) with the social costs and benefits of these activities, ie that ‘free-riding’ on the efforts of information producers is (more or less) curtailed. A widely held view is that this tradition of what might be called ‘copyright-law-and-economics’ is now deeply divided – between adherents to what Glynn Lunney has called ‘copyright’s incentives-access paradigm’ on the one hand, and proponents of what Mark Lemley has called the ‘full value’ or ‘absolute protection’ paradigm on the other. Absolute protection theorists tend towards the view that all uses of copyright works should be capable of being controlled (and so priced) by the right-owner; incentives-access theorists distinguish between uses the control of which would affect the information producer’s incentives ex ante, and those that would not, and recommend that copyright protection should extend to the former category only. This paper examines the features that are said to distinguish the two paradigms from each other, focusing especially on the approach each recommends to copyright’s scope (ie the issue of what uses of copyright works properly constitute copyright infringements). Particular attention is paid to the efforts of critical economists of intellectual property law such as Lemley and Brett Frischmann to retrieve and advance versions of the incentives-access paradigm with a view to counteracting the disadvantages for society they believe are associated with the absolute protection paradigm. Ultimately, however, I conclude that too much has been made of the distinction, and that the debate over which paradigm should have priority in determining the contours of copyright policy distracts attention from a more fundamental issue – the hegemony of economic analysis generally in organising the conceptual and normative universe of legal scholars working in this area. Thus while sympathetic to the impulse underlying the efforts of Lemley and Frischmann – a concern to resist the seemingly relentless expansion of copyright towards the horizon of absolute right-holder control of all uses of copyright material – I argue that their lingering adherence to the presuppositions of economic analysis has stymied their well-meaning efforts to account for the social value of ‘information’ in terms distinct from the merely economic measure of price. My overall aim here is to suggest that, because of its presuppositions, economic analysis – in whatever paradigm it may be packaged – offers at best a blinkered perspective on both copyright law and the field of social life that copyright law affects. I conclude by proposing Jurgen Habermas’s social theory as an alternative framework in relation to which critics of copyright expansionism might fruitfully orient themselves in the future.

New generative artificial intelligence (AI) models have created new challenges for copyright policy as such models may be trained on data that include copy-protected content. This paper examines this issue from an economic perspective and analyzes how different copyright regimes for generative AI will impact the quality of content generated and AI training. Because of transaction costs (for example, because of the large amount of content being used to train generative AI models), it is not possible for copyright holders and AI providers to engage in negotiations. The result is a characterization of the factors that would favor full copyright and no copyright protections, balancing the level of potential harm to original content providers and the importance of content for AI training quality. However, it is demonstrated that an ex post mechanism like fair use can lead to higher expected social welfare than traditional rights regimes.

The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has created new avenues for creativity across diverse fields. While expanding the horizons of creativity, AI has also introduced a plethora of challenges to the intellectual property law regime. Copyright protection, as a cornerstone of intellectual property law, safeguards the moral rights and economic rights of authors who create original artistic, literary or scientific work utilising independent skill, thought and efforts. Thus, creations generated by utilising AI models via prompting, conflicting notions surrounding the ownership and authorship of the rights attached to such creations have been subjected to extensive debates. The recent decision in Thaler v. Perlmutter by the Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit has decisively addressed the debate pertaining to the ownership of copyright in AI generated works. The judgement cemented the view that copyright for works that are generated by AI platforms cannot be attributed to the AI system itself, depicting the quality of anthropocentricity. Thus, by employing the doctrinal and explorative approaches in qualitative research methodology, this study methodologically evaluates the judgement in Thaler v. Perlmutter with the goal of developing a conceptual foundation for the domain of authorship and property rights for AI generated works. The study drew upon the natural rights theory and personhood theory of intellectual property law for the purposes pertaining to the evaluation. The findings depict that Thaler v. Perlmutter reinforces the necessity of human authorship for copyright protection portraying conformity with the theoretical underpinnings of intellectual property law. At the same time, the study recognizes emerging calls for legal reforms to accommodate the evolving nature of creativity motivated by AI-related technologies. Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Copyright; Authorship; Works; Anthropocentricity

In the context of increasing access to tools that use artificial intelligence, the outcome of debates about intellectual property is important because it allows us to set the limits in which we can appropriate or refer to a product we have created with the help of AI applications, constructed as original or derivative work, using in its turn, indiscriminately, a large amount of original works protected by copyright law as a source of inspiration. At this time, texts, images or sounds generated at your request by an artificial intelligence tool cannot be attributed to it. Content generated with artificial intelligence applications does not carry intellectual property restrictions – it can be used freely, for any legal means, including commercial use. The partial or exclusive contribution or intervention of artificial intelligence in the development of a text, image or any other product cannot be detected with certainty. To acknowledge the AI contribution, it is recommended to add a note in a visible place. Artificial intelligence is not ”concerned” about truth or originality, it is concerned with constructing a plausible product, generating the most likely sequel for each sequence of text, image or sound, using as a benchmark a database of similar digital products. Therefore, the result must be checked carefully. In this article: How do we access AI tools? Under what conditions do works made with the contribution of AI benefit from copyright protection? Does content generated with artificial intelligence applications have intellectual property restrictions? How to cite ChatGPT? How to cite Bing Chat? How to reference images generated with AI programs? Can content generated by AI applications be detected?