The history of U.S. copyright law dates back to 1790 when the first copyright law was enacted under the United States Constitution. Since then, it has undergone several revisions, most recently in 2005. The law has evolved to protect various types of works, including books, maps, photographs, illustrations, musical compositions, sound recordings, computer programs, and more. However, the rapid advancement of generative AI has raised new questions and challenges for copyright law.
Generative AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that can create new content, such as text, images, or music, based on input data. These AI models have the potential to revolutionize creative industries, but they also raise concerns about copyright infringement, ownership of AI-generated works, and the use of unlicensed content in training data. As generative AI continues to advance, the U.S. Copyright Office and courts have started to address these issues.
But are they moving fast enough?
AI-Generated Works and Copyright Protection
The U.S. Copyright Office's current position is that copyright protection will only be afforded to a work if it is "created by a human being". Therefore, AI-generated works are “not eligible for copyright protection as they are not products of human creation”. However, it is possible that an artist could “modify an AI-generated work to a point that it meets the standards required for copyright protection”, but only the human-authored aspects of the work can be copyrighted. This, of course, becomes a grey area very quickly (like a lot of things with copyright).