Transformative Use and AI in Copyright Law

Traditionally, copyright has been predicated on protecting and sustaining human creativity. From the pen to the camera, human creativity has involved the use of tools. With digital forms of creativity, computing technologies have variously become the tools for creative action. What happens to the status of copyright, however, when the machine is no longer just a tool, and actively makes decisions in the creative process? In the first of two episodes on AI and copyright, Tanya Aplin (Professor of Intellectual Property Law, King’s College London) guides us through some of the issues emerging from current debates over relationships between AI, copyright and creativity. For this episode, Tanya outlines how the status of AI generated works varies between jurisdictions, and also reflects on disputes arising from the uses of copyrighted works as AI training data. In a subsequent episode, she returns to pick up the conversation on copyright and the protection of AI-generated outputs.