A landscape painting of the AI, art and copyright terrain

Abstract

2023 is the year that artificial intelligence (AI) is now mainstream when it comes to discussions of intellectual property and technology. ChatGPT has captured the imagination of the public and of lawyers, with a flurry of commentaries and ChatGPT-generated discussions on diverse legal topics. Yet AI is of course not new. ChatGPT may be current news, but AI has been involved in the creation of art for many years. Our culture is a visual one, so a discussion of AI, art and copyright appears timely. This compact book (it runs to 151 pages) is an interesting addition to the literature on AI, art and copyright. Both synthetic in nature (reviewing much of the literature) and also not afraid to raise the author’s own opinions, it is a picture—a landscape painting—of the AI, art and copyright terrain. The book is particularly good at examining issues related to the authorship of AI-generated works and copyright subsistence looking at recent examples of AI-generated art including The Next Rembrandt (2016) and Edmond Belamy (sold at Christie’s in 2018). The author reminds us that the question is nuanced—simply stating that a machine cannot be an author (and so the AI work is not protected by copyright) begs a range of questions related to the nature of authorship, collaboration and joint works: at present, the human author is very much involved in the creation of AI works. It is also good to see that he does not sit on the fence—ultimately for the author, copyright protection does not just require the presence or involvement of a human author—‘copyright protection requires a human author in the classical sense of the term, who combines the conception and execution of the work’ (page 88).