INTRODUCTION

There are two schools of thought which govern the world of Artificial Intelligence, one which
believes that it is the future of the world and other, which sees it as a destroyer. To choose one
school of thought would be a sin one cannot afford to commit.

Artificial Intelligence has brought in a revolution in the real world. The Recommendations on
Civil Law Rules on Robotics by the European Parliament Report consists of a recital which
basically addresses two issues: 1) the changes and challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence to
society and 2) what responses are given by the regulators to such challenges. 1 One of such areas
which is highly impacted by this science is the law of intellectual property. This is evident from
the fact that AI is developing the ability to bring forth creation of its own in the contemporary
world.

There is no limit to the areas where AI can be applied. AI is capable of creating beautiful
paintings2 kept in different museums, writing literary pieces 3 for different competition, compose
lyrics4. AI is also capable of performing stand-up comedy 5 or a poetry slam. AI is not lagging
behind in creating pieces of codes for any software.6

For example, the Associated Press (AP) was posed with a challenge to expand the content and
quantity of its articles; it came up with an AI program that could generate numerous articles. 7 But

1
European Parliament Report with Recommendations on Civil Law Rules on Robotics as of 27 January 2017
< http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A8-2017-
0005+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN >
accessed 12 July 2018, [“Recommendations on Civil Law Rules on Robotics”], Recital B
2
Jane Wakefield, Intelligent Machines: AI Art is Taking on the Experts (BBC News, 18 September 2015)
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33677271.
3
Olewitz Chloe, A Japanese AI Program Just Wrote a Short Novel, and It Almost Won a Literary Prize (Digital
Trends, 23 March 2016) https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/japanese-ai-writes-novel-passes-first-round-
nationanl-literary-prize/.
4
Brandom Russell, Google's Art Machine Just Wrote Its First Song (The Verge, 1 June 2016)
https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/1/11829678/google-magenta-melody-art-generative-artificial-intelligence.
5
Robert Hart, If an AI Creates a Work of Art, Who Owns the Rights to It? (Quartz, 15 August 2017)
https://qz.com/1054039/.
google-deepdream-art-if-an-ai-creates-a-work-of-art-who-owns-the-rights-to-it/.
6
Jade Boyd-Rice, New A.I. Application Can Write Its Own Code 25 (Futurity, 25 April 2018)
https://www.futurity.org/artificial-intelligence-bayou-coding-1740702/.
7
Associated Press: The Associated Press Uses Wordsmith to transform raw earnings data into thousands of
publishable stories, including hundreds more quarterly earnings stories than previous manual efforts, AUTOMATED
INSIGHTS, (Feb. 12, 2018, 2:42 PM).
https://automatedinsights.com/case-studies/associated-press, https://perma.
such articles were undermined by one single question: who is the owner of such millions of
articles especially when the generator is a computer program?8

The legal industry has not kept its pace with the technological advancement. “Policy and law are
always a step behind innovation and that is almost by design.” 9 There is no clear legal aspect on
AI and the ownership attributing to any kind of work produced by it. With the exponential
growth of legal industry, the day is not far that AI generated works would flood the markets.
Lack of a legal framework is also threatening for the AI industry as the companies and investors
would be disappointed and demotivated to invest in the development of AI systems. This could
lead to a halt in the development of AI system. In order to avoid such a deadlock, a legal
framework must be developed, especially in the field of intellectual property.

In the present regime, intellectual property rights are conferred to creators as exclusive
proprietary rights. The economic reason behind such conferment is to provide incentives for the
creation of an intellectual product.10 It is more strenuous when AI generates such product. Can
such incentives be extended to AI to enjoy such right? Nevertheless, the law does not account the
application of intellectual property rights to any non-human entity, wherein the cases date back
to the 1800’s, whereby courts and the law have had conflicting views as to what constitutes
creative and inventive.11 Therefore it is imperative to consider the legal persona associated with
AI and the rights that can be granted to it through Intellectual Property law.

The first part of this paper aims to provide a conceptual explanation to AI, followed by the legal
status of the work generated by AI. The paper then deals with the different intellectual property
rights with respect to AI and finally concludes by putting forth recommendations on such issues.

8
See Ross Miller, AP’s robot journalists are writing their own stories now, THE
VERGE, (Jan. 29, 2015, 11:55 AM), https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7939067/apjournalism-
automation-robots-financial-reporting, https://perma.cc/6EPA-78J9 (last
visited Mar. 22, 2018).
9
Carole Piovesan in Amanda Jerome, Artificial Intelligence Game Changer for IP Law, Legal Experts Say (The
Lawyer’s Daily, 2 March 2018) https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/5955/artificial-intelligence-game-changer-
for-ip-law-legalexperts-say.
10
18(1) Edwin C. Hettinger, Justifying Intellectual Property (1989).

11
See U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE, COMPENDIUM OF U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE
PRACTICES §§ 306, 313.2 (3d ed. rev. 2017) (citing Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94
(1879) and Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58 (1884).