“From the point of view of the law, a work must be the result of human thought,” Marek Oleksin, a partner at law firm SK&S Euronews quoted him as saying. – This means that content created by AI “does not meet the basic condition of copyright protection.”
Humans and technology work hand in hand
The problems start when humans and AI work hand in hand.
As the expert notes, the law today is trying to keep up with changes, but often it is still “chasing reality” instead of dealing with it. There is an idea to make a separate category for works created by artificial intelligence, but it remains at the discussion stage.
In practice, the expert notes, all over the world they face the same problem: how to describe a phenomenon that already exists but does not fit into the existing legal definitions of copyright.
So far, this reality is best captured by judicial practice, including in the US and Europe, where the first rulings on AI-created content are being handed down.
In all attempts to adapt the law to reality, one principle is invariably repeated: creativity must be the result of the work of the human mind.
“When the ‘work’ is done by an AI, the attribution of copyright to a human is highly questionable,” says Marek Oleksin.
More than technology
If a text can be created in seconds and the writer’s style reproduced by an algorithm, it is difficult to determine who the real author is. Similar dilemmas arise in other areas – inventions and patent protection. The question arises whether the results of AI work can be considered on an equal footing with human works.
As the expert emphasizes, the case law still clearly traces the “human factor” and emphasizes that the main condition to consider something a “work” is the work of the human mind.
At the same time, the law notes, the development of AI creates new areas of risk. Human-created works can now be processed by generative systems, which in practice increases the likelihood of copyright infringement.
Books in an age of information overload
This is the result of new tools that can handle huge volumes of existing content. Legislation has not yet fully kept up with the pace of technological change, and the way content is created is changing in parallel.
The book now competes not just with other books, but with a whole flood of digital information. So the question is not whether it will survive. The book will not disappear, the researchers are convinced. What is changing is how much attention and effort it takes today to get back to it.
