Background

The U.S. Copyright Office stated in a letter this February that, copyright protection should not be granted to images generated by Midjourney, an AI tool. This is the first court rule regarding copyright of AI-generated works, concluding that the author is entitled to a copyright for the parts of her comic book “Zarya of the Dawn”, but not for the images produced by Midjourney.

A well-known Taiwanese writer recently demonstrated her so-called “computer graphic” work in the social media post but was found to be an AI-generated drawing.  The event unexpectedly triggered a mass discussion regarding the copyright ownership of an AI-generated images.

From text to images, it is still uncertain whether AI-generated works have the necessary quality of “originality” to benefit from copyright protection. Some argue that the AI-generated works are machine-generated and lack human creativity and subjectivity, so they are not considered original and should not be entitled to copyright; others argue that these works rely on human creators to provide design ideas and still have a certain degree of originality.

It remains to be observed in the following days whether the recent determination by the U.S. Copyright Office will become a universal value or consensus, but as more and more start-up raise millions of funds to develop related applications or business services, a question by advocates and critics in increasingly concerned tones: is this actually legal?

Time & Venue

• Moderator:
  Tsai,Chih-Hung─Division-Chief Judge, Taiwan Shilin District Court
• Penelists:

• • Lin, Sih-Han─Director of Group.G
  • Chen, Jia-Jyun─Chairman, Taiwan Information Intellectual Property Association
  • Fong, Jerry G. ─Professor, Graduate Institute of Technology, Innovation & Intellectual
    Property Management, NCCU
  • Chang, Harley ─Designer, BAD BONE