Artificial Creations: Ascription, Ownership, Time-Specific Monopolies

Abstract

Creativity has always been synonymous with humans. No other living species could boast of creativity as humans could. Even the smartest computers thrived only on the ingenious imaginations of its coders. However, that is steadily changing with highly advanced artificially intelligent systems that demonstrate incredible capabilities to autonomously (i.e., with minimal or no human input) produce creative products that would ordinarily deserve intellectual property status if created by a human. These systems could be called “artificial creators” and their creative products “artificial creations”. The use of artificial creators is likely to become a part of mainstream production practices in the creative and innovation industries sooner than we realize. When they do, intellectual property regimes (that are inherently designed to reward human creativity) must be sufficiently prepared to aptly respond to the phenomenon of what could be called “artificial creativity”. Needless to say, any such response must be guided by considerations of public welfare. This paper analyzes what that response ought to look like by revisiting the determinants of intellectual property and critiquing its nature and modes. This understanding of intellectual property is then applied to investigate the determinants of intellectual property in artificial creations so as to determine the intrinsic justifications for intellectual property rewards for artificial creativity, and accordingly, develop general modalities for granting intellectual property status to artificial creations. Finally, the treatment of “artificial works” (i.e., copyrightable artificial creations) and “artificial inventions” (i.e., patentable artificial creations) by current intellectual property regimes is critiqued, and specific modalities for granting intellectual property status to artificial works and artificial inventions are developed.