Can AI Be Considered an “Author” Under Copyright Law?
Artificial Intelligence
Keywords:
Artificial Intelligence, authorship, Constitution, Copyright Law, Creativity, AgencyAbstract
One of the biggest challenges in intellectual property law as AI
keeps improving is to figure out if copyright law should
recognize AI as an "author". This paper reviews the intricacies of
the problem of authorship for works created by AI and the
effects of these phenomena on copyright law. Human authorship
has always been the premise of copyright law which grants it
protection to the works made by humans and recognizes the
characteristics of creativity, intellect, and expression that come
from humans (authors). Nonetheless, with the rise of AI-powered
technologies, there are machines that can come up with original
ideas and do the content creation task without any human
intervention; hence it is not clear who the author is anymore.
Arguably, a major concern in assigning authorship is the
creative input and decision-making part. An AI model may give
an output it learned from huge data sources and a
mathematical procedure but still it does not have the capability
to come up with an original idea and to relate to humans
emotionally. Opponents of the idea point out that there be no
such things as a conscious idea or emotional side in a computer
program, so computer-generated works are not able to have the
qualities that are typically associated with human-authored
creations.
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References
1. WIPO, ‘Worldwide Symposium on the Intellectual Property Aspects of Artificial
Intelligence’ available at: www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_698.pdf (last
visited on 21 April 2024).
2. WIPO Secretariat, Revised Issues Paper on Intellectual Property Policy and Artificial Intelligence (WIPO/IP/AI/2/GE/20/1).
3. Andres Guadamuz, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Copyright’ (WIPO Magazine, October 2017), available at: www.wipo.int/ wipo_magazine/ en/ 2017/ 05/ article_0003.html (last visited on 21 April 2024).
4. Lucy Rana & Meril Mathew Joy, ‘India: Artificial Intelligence And Copyright – The Authorship’ (Mondaq, 18 December 2019), available at: //www.mondaq.
com/india/copyright/876800/artificialintelligence-andcopyright-the-authorship
(last visited on 21 April 2024).
5. Dr. Mezei Pe ter, ‘Artificial Authorship under Indian Copyright Law?’ (Copyright 21, 13
August 2021), available at: https://copy21.com/ 2021/ 08/ artificial-authorship-
under-indian-copyright-law/ (last visited on 21 April 2024).
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Copyright (c) 2025 Kkanika Sharma, Sankalp Mirani (Author)
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