From Animals to Artificial Intelligence: Non-Human Beings’ Intellectual Property Protection by “Judicial Capacity for Copyrights”

Abstract

Since artificial intelligence has completed the process from the auxiliary tool of human creation to the independent creation completion of works with formal appearance, it has brought many legal issues that have caused widespread controversy. Among them, whether artificial intelligence has the qualification of legal subject and whether the products of artificial intelligence should be protected by law is the focus of the problem. In the legal circle, the involvement of the theme of “non-anthropocentrism” can be traced back to the debate between animal legal personality and non-human ecological rights. The Naruto v. Slater Monkey selfie case and the Pigcasso light people’s debating about animal copyright, and artificial intelligence provides a new research perspective and reinvigorates the research on animal copyright. By means of the analogy research of animals, humans and artificial intelligence, this paper explores the rationality, necessity and feasibility of investing non-human beings with quasi-legal subject qualification in the special subdivision field of law—copyright. Quasi-legal subject qualification means that artificial narrow intelligence and animals are endowed with judicial capacity for copyrights and limited capacity to act. At the same time, the designers of artificial intelligence, animal breeders and the government and so on serve as the quasi-guardian of artificial intelligence and animals. In addition, artificial general intelligence and artificial super general intelligence are endowed with completely independent legal capacity to act, and the quasi-guardian system is terminated. The quasi-guardian system is perfectly compatible with the existing legal framework from the perspective of development. It protects the ownerless intellectual property from the free lift, thereby helping avoid the tragedy of the commons. Furthermore, it solves the problem that animals and artificial narrow intelligence cannot independently safeguard their rights and provides a forward-looking theoretical model for the system construction of non-human copyright.