Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Challenges and Proposals

Abstract

Within the development of artificial intelligence systems, it is no more a fictional scenario the very existence of electronic devices that could not only imitate human reasoning but generate forms of human expressions as well such as painting, music, poetry, literature etc. In this new living reality, a work of art will be no more an attribute to human beings exclusively. Machines could generate - and actually they are already doing so - what we called not a long time ago the production of human feelings. In Copyright Law, or in “droit d’auteur” if we look to continental law tradition it poses a handful of intricate questions as consequence. This research aims to contribute to the debates concerning the authorship of works of art created by artificial intelligence. Could they be registered? In that case who could be considered its author? the machine? The human being who developed the IA system? To achieve its goals the article proposes summarizing and analyzing some of legal and scholars reasoning throughout the world in order to furnish a sample of tendencies already in use in several countries. As a result, it was concluded that the primacy of “Homo mensura” still remains at the basis of both copyright law or “droit d’auteur” because only a human mind could conceive a proper creative work. However, a halfway to solve the authorship problem of works developed by IA machines might involve the rearrangement the notion of a legal person to preserve some economic characteristics of Copyright laws.