As we’re wrapping up the course section on copyright and considering we have focused a lot on AI, I thought it would be interesting to share a case from 2023 in China where it was held that there can be copyright in works of AI.
The case involved an AI generated image which was created by the plaintiff, Mr. Li, and was posted to an online platform. The defendant, Mr. Lui, subsequently used this image to accompany an article of theirs which was also published online. Mr. Li claimed that the defendant had violated his copyrights.
There were several issues addressed in the case but the most pertinent one (to our course) was whether the plaintiff owned the copyright over the AI generated image. This naturally involved looking at who is the author of the image as well. The court found that the plaintiff had authorship over the image. This was owing to the fact that only natural persons (edit: and a corporate or unincorporated organization) can have authorship over a work (Art. 11 of the Chinese Copyright Law), so this ruled out the possibility of the AI having authorship over the image. Moreover, the court had stated that ‘the picture involved is generated directly due to the plaintiffs intellectual investment and it reflects the plaintiffs personalised expression. Therefore, the plaintiff is the author of the picture involved and owns the copyright on it’. This reflects the creative control and originality the creator of the image, Mr. Li, is deemed to have had over the work which consequently granted him ownership. A caveat to this ownership however is that the plaintiff must make it clear that the work is AI generated.
This case is very interesting and as mentioned above also deals with other interesting issues so I have attached a link to the English translated version of the case for anyone who would like to read the case in full.
https://english.bjinternetcourt.gov.cn/pdf/BeijingInternetCourtCivilJudgment112792023.pdf
Copyright & Social Media
Communications Law
Hi Ipalo, thanks for sharing this case! It’s really interesting to see how different jurisdictions are dealing with AI copyright issues. While I’m not convinced by the court’s decision here (I think it would really discourage creators), it definitely brings up some questions about originality in AI-generated work. Like, how much human effort makes something “original” enough?
Also, just wanted to point out something I found when I looked up Article 11 of Chinese Copyright Law: it says legal entities can be authors too, not just natural persons. This doesn’t affect the reasoning of the case though, since AI isn’t classified as either a natural person or a legal entity.
Thank you for pointing out the error about Article 11! You are right that it isn’t just natural persons, I have edited my post to reflect the correct wording of the court when addressing Article 11 now. And I agree that it is difficult to ascertain how much human effort makes something original enough, which is evidently one of the reasons jurisdictions differ on whether there can be copyright in AI or not. Thank you for the comment!