Copyright on images generated by artificial intelligence tools: challenging originality

Ronaldo Zanata Pazim

Abstract

In the rapidly evolving world landscape of technology, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has given rise to a myriad of legal challenges. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been revolutionizing several sectors of society, including the world of arts. It is already possible to generate photorealistic images from raw data, without human intervention. One area that requires urgent attention is the copyright protection of images generated by AI systems. The traditional focus of copyright law has been to protect works created by human beings. However, AI is challenging this paradigm, generating works without the direct intervention of a human author. This raises the question of how to enforce copyright on these automated creations. Another debate revolves around the originality of AI-generated images. A work needs to be original to receive copyright protection, but how do you define originality in a context where a machine is creating something based on pre-existing patterns and data? Some argue that since AIs lack creativity in the human sense, their creations cannot be considered originally them, but rather derived from other works and data. The analysis reveals that there is no consensus on the subject, and that current legislation seems inadequate to address this issue, leading to the exploration of alternative protection mechanisms. This article investigates the possibility of a sui generis legal approach to copyright over AI-generated images and examines proposals and debates around this topic.

Keywords: Copyright. Intellectual property. Artificial intelligence.