Can copyright vest in an AI? The primary objective of intellectual property law is to protect the rights of the creators of intellectual property.10 Copyright laws specifically aim to: (i) promote creativity and encourage authors, composers, artists and designers to create original works by affording them the exclusive right to exploit such work for monetary gain for a limited period; and (ii) protect the creators of the original works from unauthorised reproduction or exploitation of those works.

To my knowledge, conferring copyright in works generated by artificial intelligence has never been specifically prohibited. However, there are indications that the laws of many countries are not amenable to non-human copyright. In the United States, for example, the Copyright Office has declared that it will “register an original work of authorship, provided that the work was created by a human being.” This stance flows from case law (e.g. Feist Publications v Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc. 499 U.S. 340 (1991)) which specifies that copyright law only protects “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the mind.” Similarly, in a recent Australian case (Acohs Pty Ltd v Ucorp Pty Ltd), a court declared that a work generated with the intervention of a computer could not be protected by copyright because it was not produced by a human.

With the advent of AI software, computers — not monkeys — will potentially create millions of original works that may then be protected by copyright, under current law, for more than 100 years.