A Study On Copyright Issues Relating To AI-Generated Contents

Scientific and technological progress is the driving force behind the changes in the copyright legal system.Throughout the development of copyright law,we can find that every significant innovation and progress in the field of science and technology will bring new challenges on the traditional copyright system.The emergence of artificial intelligence(AI)is another example of this view.AI has had a profound impact on production and daily life since its birth,which has even surpassed human intelligence in many fields.It hits the traditional copyright system greatly,which has led to scholars’discussion on AI related copyright issues.This paper focuses on the copyrightability,rights ownership and protection mode of AI generated contents,which consists of the following parts:The foreword briefly introduces the development status of AI,and then puts forward the main issues to be discussed in this paper.Also,this part summarizes the different titles of "AI generated contents" in the academe,and holds a negative attitude towards the term "AI creation works".The second part demonstrates the copyrightability of AI generated contents from the legal level and classification perspective.From the perspective of legal attributes,AI generated contents fully conforms to the constituent elements of the "work" in the sense of copyright law,and should be the object of copyright law protection.From the classification of AI,in the creation of the first category of AI generated contents,AI is only a tool to assist human creation and it should be considered as a work created by human authors.Although the second category of contents is mainly done by AI,it still does not get rid of its tool characteristics and should be treated in the same way as the first one.The creation of the third category of AI generated contents is maximally free from human interventions,which will greatly impact the human’s dominant position.However,copyright law is not formulated in the context of AI;we cannot deny its copyrightability just due to the creativity of the work originating from a non-human author.The third part takes the relevant doctrines as the entry point and analyzes the ownership of AI generated eontents in detail.The related theories of rights attribution mainly include public domain theory,AI theory and programmer theory.Through the introduction and evaluation of the above three theories,the author believes that it is more reasonable to assign the relevant copyright of AI generated contents to the owner of AI,and the motivation theory and employment theory provide a theoretical basis for such a distribution plan.The last part analyzes the protection mode of AI generated contents based on the first three parts.The originality of AI generated content is the root cause of its protection by copyright law,however,the purpose of neighboring right is to protect the interests of communicators,not tihe originality.In comparison.the copyright mode is more suitable flian neighboring mode for the protection of AI generated contents.Especially,the special copyright protection mode not only preserves the basic system of copyright,but also adapts to the special attributes of AI generated contents,so it is the best choice,taking into account the stability and inclusiveness of the law,for protecting AI generated contents.Then the author puts forward the design concept of the specific rules vunder the special copyright protection mode by combining the special content of AI generated contents,and proposes legislative proposals in a targeted manner,in order to provide reference for the resolution of relevant copyright disputes.