Judge from Beijing Internet Court encourages people to harness AI to boost creativity

A judge who has just decided that an AI-generated image in an intellectual property dispute was an artwork protected by copyright laws said she is in favor of the innovative development of generative AI and encourages people to use AI tools to be creative.

The remarks were made after the ruling by the Beijing Internet Court in order to encourage the creation of new works, said Zhu Ge, the presiding judge at a public event held in Beijing.

The essentials of people using AI models to generate images are that people use tools to make a creation. In this sense, the creators have the copyright over the generated images and they are protected by copyright law, she said, domestic media outlet thepaper.cn reported on Monday.

The court recognized in December 2021 that pictures generated via AI image generators should be considered artworks and can be copyrighted based on the originality and intellectual input of their human creators, in this case, the plaintiff surnamed Li.

The court therefore required the defendant to issue a public apology and pay the plaintiff 500 yuan ($70.16) in compensation.

The ruling, the country's first case of its kind, is believed to show Beijing's fresh support for AI-driven creativity. It has also responded to questions about whether an AI-generated image is an artwork protected by copyright law, and whether it is regarded as the intellectual output of its human creator.

Against this backdrop, Zhu said the court considered the impact it is likely to have on the development of the AI industry.

Zhu said that the court has fully discussed issues related to the legal attributes and ownership of the AI image generator under the framework of Chinese law, hoping that the case will provide a reference for judgments in similar cases, as well as subsequent AI-related legislation, although it doesn't necessarily mean that all the generative AI-related cases can resort to the same judgment.

Whether AI-generated work can be protected by copyright should be decided on a case-by-case basis, she said.