Court Recognizes Copyright in AI-Generated Work
Summary
On November 23, 2023, the Beijing Internet Court ruled in favor of a plaintiff who claimed copyright in an image generated by AI. In its first copyright decision concerning AI-generated content, decided in 2019, the Court held that generated content is not a protectable work because works must be created by a natural person and that the content at issue— automatically generated reports and analytics—is not an original expression of a person’s thoughts. In this case, the Court determined that a generated image qualified as a work based on the plaintiff’s selection of prompts and parameters to arrive at the final image. These steps were enough to reflect the plaintiff’s original intellectual investment and personal judgment, thereby qualifying as a work protected by copyright. Such determinations remain a case-bycase basis and depend on the nature of how the content is generated.
