Copyright for WMDD

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) describes algorithms that can be used to create new content, including images, audio, video, computer code, and more.

AI is surfacing new intellectual property considerations for professionals in web design and development; for example:

Copyright ownership in AI inputs 

• AI models are trained on massive data sets, which may include content downloaded from the Internet largely without permission from rights holders.

Attribution

• Generative AI models scrape the Internet for content, but oftentimes the authorship of that content is entirely unknown. When users ask an AI model to do something, it is computational complex to know what works it drew on.

Copyright ownership in AI outputs 

• Whether works generated by AI are deserving of copyright protection is a topic of debate. Some argue that AI programs are akin to other tools that humans use to create copyright-protected works (i.e. the camera), and that at least some AI generated works deserve copyright protection.
• Others say that the users do not have enough control over outputs (i.e. exercise of skill and judgment) for AI-generated works to earn copyright protection. 

GitHub Copilot, a GenAI model powered by Codex (OpenAI), turns natural language prompts into coding suggestions across dozens of languages, including Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, and Go.

It has been trained on natural language text and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub. 

GitHub contends that training Copilot on public repositories is fair use. 

However, a class-action lawsuit filed in 2022 argues that Microsoft (GitHub's parent company) and OpenAI profit from the work of open-source programmers by violating the conditions of their open-source licenses. 

Specifically, the lawsuit states that code generated by Copilot does not include any attribution to the original author of the code, copyright notices, or a copy of the license, which most open-source licenses require.

In August 2023, GitHub announced a private beta of GitHub Copilot with code referencing that includes a filter to detect code suggestions matching public code on GitHub.

Reference: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed. (2022, November 19). IEEE Spectrum. 

In late 2021, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) registered a copyright for a Starry Night-inspired painting titled Suryast.

The copyright registration lists two co-authors – one human, the other an AI painting app – making Suryast the first Canadian copyright registration with an AI author. 

Please note that the information provided on this site is for educational purposes and is not intended as legal advice.