The Copyright Protection of AI-Created works by the European Union Copyright Legislation

Abstract

Copyright law in the European Union has increasingly focussed on expanding the scope of works that have a right to intellectual property protection. Currently, the law covers various work categories such as literary works, music, film and sound recordings among others. The European Copyright Legislation framework does not consider non-human innovations yet advances in artificial intelligence (AI) continue to lead to the development of machine-generated creative works. Currently, there are developments that allow autonomous programs to create works of considerable monetary value which range from software to literary works, images and music. The creative process behind these works will have limited or no human contribution. Therefore, this creates a need for copyright regulations to be updated so as to adequately canvas all the AI-created works. To this effect, this research paper critically analyses the prevailing EU copyright legislation to understand its position when it comes to copyright protection for AI-generated works. Additionally, the research answers why AI-generated works ought to be protected and which legal tools could be improvised to grant copyright protection. The famous legal dogmatic approach was incorporated into the research whereby various scholarly materials from peer-reviewed sources are utilised to provide insight into the research subject. In conclusion, the researcher acknowledges the lack of clarity within EU copyright legislation in relation to AI-created works. Additionally, the research indicates that protection of these works should ensue as an incentive to developers and also as a guarantee of technological development for all of entire society.