Can the AI-Generated Content be Protected as Work Under Copyright Law? ---Jurisprudential Developments in China

Abstract

Recent Chinese cases of the copyright disputes on AI-generated content (AGC) reveal challenges to copyright jurisprudence by Natural Language Processing (NPL)-based AI systems. Some scholars argued from the perspectives of intellectual characteristics of the AGC. This paper, however, combines historical and doctrinal methods to show that the production process of AGC should be the defining factor of work. This paper argues that modern copyright law does not protect the AI-generated content from the aspect of copyright law in intellectual writings/ paintings/ music/ art as work. Work in the history of copyright law requires direct human intellectual labor, which the AI lacks. AI does not have physical and / or mental labor to the levels of humans, and the human physical and intellectual labors put into building the AI system is different from the AIs production of contents. These are two separate and consecutive processes: humans make AI, and AI automatically generates contents. The second process cannot produce work because it does not involve comparable labor to humans.