Juxtaposition of AI-Generated Works and Copyright Law Under India’s Intellectual Property Regime

The juxtaposition of Artificial intelligence (AI)-generated works and copyright under the Indian intellectual property regime is a rather meekly addressed topic of discussion across various precedents and statutory overviews. Unlike any other technology previously seen before, AI embedded with deep learning software even have the ability to generate works with little to no human interference and can be considered an entirely original work. This phenomenon is often referred to as ‘AI emergence’ and has led to the conception of several original creations. The key originality feature of the AI work raises disputes pertaining to ascertaining authorship and ownership over the AI generated work and its subsequent copyright and begs the question of whether AI ownership can break the traditional definition of a person under section 2(d)(vi) under the Copyright Act, 1957 to include artificial entities. In response to this conundrum, this paper warns against awarding authorship rights to AI, in light of several legal complex issues starting with infinite duration of protection and the dangerous precedent of extended human like recognition to AI. Instead, to balance the need to copyright the AI generated work against the creator’s and user’s interest, this paper proposes the introduction of clearer guidelines on how the creator’s authorship and ownership is determined over the AI generated work, in terms of the extent of contribution made. It further proposes the introduction of clarity through statutory provisions on the regulation of copyright of the AI generated work.