Abstract
Whether copyrights should exist in content generated by an artificial intelligence is a frequently discussed issue in the legal literature. Most of the discussion focuses on economic rights, whereas the relationship of artificial intelligence and moral rights remains relatively obscure. However, as moral rights traditionally aim at protecting the author’s “personal sphere”, the question whether the law should recognize such protection in the content produced by machines is pressing; this is especially true considering that artificial intelligence is continuously further developed and increasingly hard to comprehend for human beings. This paper first provides the background on the protection of moral rights under existing international, U.S. and European copyright laws. On this basis, the paper then proceeds to highlight special issues in connection with moral rights and content produced by artificial intelligence, in particular whether an artificial intelligence itself, the creator or users of an artificial intelligence should be considered as owners of moral rights. Finally, the present research discusses possible future solutions, in particular alternative forms of attribution rights or the introduction of related rights.
Highlights
Artificial Intelligence (AI)2 is often considered as a disruptive technology
Against the background of the aim to strengthen the internal market, European copyright law has focused on the harmonization of economic rights while moral rights have never been harmonized to a comparable extent (Sirvinskaite 2010)
Should humans that interact with the AI—i.e., the creators or the users—should have moral rights in the content produced by the AI? Where software is a tool used by humans, the general rules apply: Where the programmer contributes creative effort, she is awarded a copyright the extent of which is determined by national law
Summary
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often considered as a disruptive technology. The implications of this technology are not confined to the industrial sector, but do extent to numerous artistic fields, like the creation of music or works of art (Bridy 2016; Niebla Zatarain 2018; Schönberger 2018). Upstream refers to legal issues that arise from making a machine capable of generating content which would include the implications of machine learning, or whether existing exceptions and limitations to copyright would apply (or should be enacted) (Grimmelmann 2016a, b; Stewart 2014). This relates to the questions whether or how AI could be “taught” to avoid copyright infringement or “interpret” legal provisions (Schafer et al 2015). This refers to the content generated by the AI and explores the question whether or to what extent copyright law grants protection to this content; this naturally encompasses the question to whom (or what) the law should allocate (exclusive) copyrights (Schafer et al 2015; Schönberger 2018)
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