Synthetic media copyright: Should we give exclusive rights to AI?

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  Quantumrun Foresight
• February 13, 2023

Copyright law is a primary issue of all the legal predicaments associated with synthetic media. Historically, it has been considered illegal to create and share an exact replica of copyrighted content—be it a photo, song, or TV show. But what happens when artificial intelligence (AI) systems recreate content so accurately that people can’t tell the difference?

Synthetic media copyright context

When copyright is granted over literary or artistic work to its creator, it’s an exclusive right. The conflict between copyright and synthetic media happens when AI or machines recreate the work. If that were to happen, it would be indistinguishable from the original content. 

As a result, the owner or creator would have no control over their work and couldn’t make money from it. Additionally, an AI system could be trained to recognize where synthetic content violates copyright law, then generate the content as close to that limit as possible while still staying within legal boundaries. 

In countries whose legal tradition is common law (e.g., Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the US), copyright law follows the utilitarian theory. According to this theory, creators are given rewards and incentives in exchange for allowing public access to their work(s) to benefit society. Under this theory of authorship, personality is not as important; therefore, it’s possible that non-human entities could be considered authors. However, there are still no proper AI copyright regulations in these territories.

There are two sides to the synthetic media copyright debate. One side claims that intellectual property rights should cover AI-generated work and inventions as these algorithms have self-learned. The other side argues that the technology is still being developed to its full potential, and others should be allowed to build on existing discoveries.

Disruptive impact

An organization that is seriously considering the implications of synthetic media copyright is the United Nations’s (UN) World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). According to WIPO, in the past, there was no question as to who owned the copyright of computer-generated works because the program was seen as simply a tool that assisted in the creative process, similar to pen and paper. 

Most definitions of originality for copyrighted works require a human author, meaning that these new AI-generated pieces may not be protected under existing law. Several countries, including Spain and Germany, only allow work created by a human to have legal protection under copyright law. However, with recent advancements in AI technology, computer programs often make decisions during the creative process rather than humans.

While some might say this distinction is unimportant, the law’s way of handling new types of machine-driven creativity could have far-reaching commercial implications. For example, AI is already being used to create pieces in artificial music, journalism, and gaming. In theory, these works could be public domain because a human author does not make them. Consequently, anyone can freely use and reuse them.

With the current advances in computing, and large amounts of computational power available, the distinction between human- and machine-generated content may soon become moot. Machines can learn styles from extensive datasets of content and, given enough time, will be able to replicate humans astonishingly well. Meanwhile, WIPO is actively working with UN member states to further address this issue.

In late 2022, the public witnessed an explosion of AI-powered content-generation engines from companies like OpenAI that could create custom art, text, code, video, and many other forms of content with a simple text prompt.

Implications of synthetic media copyright

Wider implications of evolving copyright legislation as it concerns synthetic media may include: 

• AI-generated musicians and artists being given copyright protection, leading to the establishment of digital superstars. 
• Increased copyright infringement lawsuits by human artists against AI content generation technology firms that enable AI to create slightly different versions of their work.
• A new wave of startups being founded around increasingly niche applications of AI-generated content production. 
• Countries having different policies regarding AI and copyright, leading to loopholes, uneven regulation, and content generation arbitrage. 
• Companies creating derivative works of classical masterpieces or finishing symphonies of renowned composers.

Questions to comment on

• If you’re an artist or content creator, where do you stand on this debate?
• What are the other ways that AI-generated content should be regulated?