“Prompting or creativity: new challenges for authorship in copyright”

Rawlings, J

“Prompting or creativity: new challenges for authorship in copyright”

Rawlings, J

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Publisher:: Australasian Society for Computers and Law
Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Computers & Law, 2024
Issue Date:: 2024-01-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Rawlings, J
dc.date.accessioned	2024-05-02T08:08:43Z
dc.date.available	2024-05-02T08:08:43Z
dc.date.issued	2024-01-01
dc.identifier.citation	Computers & Law, 2024
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/178533
dc.description.abstract	Using generative AI systems to make new works severs the connection between authorship, ownership, idea/expression, and subsistence of copyright. It is not meaningful or useful to apply copyright law to works that have not been created by humans. I argue that copyright be reserved for works of human authorship, as the Australian case law on subsistence of copyright suggests. A prompt or prompts which produces a result from a generative AI tool may be a copyright work. Entering a prompt into a generative AI system to create new text, images, gestures, or sounds is not an act of authorship as the generative AI system creates the form of expression of the response. Is there authorship of a work created using that prompt? Is it the person who entered the prompt, the creators of the works used to train the generative AI system or the person(s) who made the economic arrangements for the training and creation of the generative AI system? Or it could be no-one at all, on the basis that there is no identifiable “author” entity involved. Copyright should be reserved for works by identifiable human authors, although the concept of originality and authorship should be re-examined in favour of a wider sense of intellectual creation and collaboration. The answer may lie partly in finally introducing protection of “computer generated works” to Australian copyright law. It may also lie in a new “Australian AI right” to protect works created using generative AI systems.
dc.language	en
dc.publisher	Australasian Society for Computers and Law
dc.relation.ispartof	Computers & Law
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess
dc.title	“Prompting or creativity: new challenges for authorship in copyright”
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.location.activity	Australia
pubs.organisational-group	University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Law
utslib.copyright.status	recently_added	*
pubs.consider-herdc	false
dc.date.updated	2024-05-02T08:08:41Z
pubs.publication-status	Accepted

Abstract:

Using generative AI systems to make new works severs the connection between authorship, ownership, idea/expression, and subsistence of copyright. It is not meaningful or useful to apply copyright law to works that have not been created by humans. I argue that copyright be reserved for works of human authorship, as the Australian case law on subsistence of copyright suggests. A prompt or prompts which produces a result from a generative AI tool may be a copyright work. Entering a prompt into a generative AI system to create new text, images, gestures, or sounds is not an act of authorship as the generative AI system creates the form of expression of the response. Is there authorship of a work created using that prompt? Is it the person who entered the prompt, the creators of the works used to train the generative AI system or the person(s) who made the economic arrangements for the training and creation of the generative AI system? Or it could be no-one at all, on the basis that there is no identifiable “author” entity involved. Copyright should be reserved for works by identifiable human authors, although the concept of originality and authorship should be re-examined in favour of a wider sense of intellectual creation and collaboration. The answer may lie partly in finally introducing protection of “computer generated works” to Australian copyright law. It may also lie in a new “Australian AI right” to protect works created using generative AI systems.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/178533