Who Owns the Copyright to AI Generated Content?
In this short article, we examine the legal issues attached to the ownership of AI generated content.
We have all read about the advances and sometimes negative possibilities, with AI (“Artificial Intelligence”) generated content. Books, film scripts, music and video have all experienced a dramatic increase in output, using AI platforms and programmes. Subject areas such as “deep fake” content fill our news stories. Within the field of creative content, copyright is becoming an important issue, especially when content can be monetised on platforms such as Youtube, TikTok and products can be sold on the likes of Etsy, Ebay, Amazon and other similar outlets. But who actually owns the copyright to those works?
The ownership of copyright to AI-generated content or materials in the UK is a complex and evolving issue. As the concept is extremely new, the law is still developing in this area, and there is currently no clear consensus on who owns the copyright. it could take several Court Cases to decide who owns the copyright of AI generated or created content.
In the UK, copyright law is based on the principle that only works created by ‘human beings’ can be protected. However, there is a small range of exceptions for computer-generated works. A computer-generated work is defined as a work “generated by computer in circumstances such that there is no human author of the work”. A “work” covers things from artwork to music, songs, films, poems, cartoons, scripts, books and similar matter.
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) states that the author of a computer-generated work is the person “by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken”. This means that the copyright to a computer-generated work will typically belong to the person who programmed the AI and provided the data that the AI used to generate the work.
In the United States, the prohibitions are a little clearer – the US Copyright Office has stated that “a work must be the result of original and creative authorship by a human author” in order to be copyrightable. This directly indicates that AI-generated text that is not significantly influenced by human input may not be copyrightable.
However, in assessing who owns the copyright to AI generated content (whether in the UK, USA or elsewhere), there are some cases and examples where the copyright to a computer-generated work may belong to someone else. Using that principle as a starting point, for example, if the AI is trained on a dataset of human-created text, the AI’s output may be considered a derivative work of the original text. In this situation, the copyright would belong to the owner of the original text.
Another possibility is that the copyright to a computer-generated work could belong to the user of the AI. This is because the user may be considered the “Author” of the work, even if the AI itself is capable of generating original text. The prompts and keywords or particular requests, could be considered to be the ‘originating source’ of the content generated by the AI process.
Ultimately, the question of who owns copyright to AI-generated content is likely to be decided on a case-by-case basis. As AI technology continues to develop, it is likely that the law will also evolve to address the increasingly worrying issue of copyright ownership. After all, we have been at that similar point regarding copyrights before, as the Internet and online activity first exploded into our daily lives.
Here are some additional factors that might be considered when determining who owns the copyright to AI-generated content:
The extent to which the AI is capable of its own original thought and creativity.
The degree of human input into the creation of the AI-generated material.
The intended use of the AI-generated material.
It is important to note that the law in this area is still developing, and there is no clear consensus on who owns copyright to AI-generated content. As one of the UK’s leading providers of legal advice regarding AI and services connected to Brands, Media & Technology Law. If you are concerned about the ownership of AI-generated content, you should contact us for a consultation and advice.
Note: A kind acknowledgement is given to Andrew Neel of pexels.com for his photo. A portion of this article was created by using an AI source as an experiment by the Achieve Legal Editorial team. We would like to think that as the originators of thwe keywords, expressions and word body, we now own the copyright to it.