“Why a Chinese Court’s Landmark Decision Recognising the Copyright for an AI-Generated Image Benefits Creators in This Nascent Field”, 2024-01-15 ():
Assigning generative AI content a legal status aims to encourage people to create with new tools, Beijing Internet Court judge Zhu Ge said. The court’s ruling last November has added fuel to heated arguments on whether AI-generated content should be protected by copyright laws.
…In the first judgment of its kind in mainland China, the Beijing Internet Court last November ruled that a picture, generated via the text-to-image software Stable Diffusion, should be considered an artwork under the protection of copyright laws, because of the “originality” and intellectual input of its human creator.
Assigning generative AI content a legal status under certain conditions in this case is aimed at encouraging people to create with new tools, presiding judge Zhu Ge said last week at a lecture that was first reported on Monday by Chinese online news outlet The Paper. “If no content created with AI models can be considered artwork, this would deal a blow to the industry”, Zhu was quoted as saying in the report…Zhu, the presiding judge, said in her lecture that the ruling was made with the potential implications for “emerging industries” in mind, according to The Paper’s report. It said Zhu hoped her decision in the case could serve as a reference for future disputes.
…Li sued a blogger surnamed Liu for allegedly using that image without permission in a post on Baijiahao, a Chinese content-sharing platform owned by Baidu. The court subsequently ruled in favour of Li. It said Li’s AI-generated image was an artwork, based on how he had continuously added prompts and repeatedly adjusted the parameters to come up with a picture that reflected his “aesthetic choice and personalized judgment”.
The court ordered the defendant Liu to issue a public apology as well as pay the plaintiff 500 yuan (US$70.43) in damages and 50 yuan for court fees.