CityU Staff Seminar - Copyright As An Obstacle to AI Development

The CityU Staff Seminar named “Copyright As An Obstacle to AI Development” was held on 19^th Aug 2020.  This talk invited Dr. Tianxiang He (Asst. Professor, School of Law) to investigate the current debates over copyright issues of AI in China, a jurisdiction that embraces the droit d'auteur (or French copyright law) system, especially those surrounding the pivotal issues of originality and ownership, and clarifies possible misunderstandings.

Firstly, Dr. He briefed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology had reached a point where the contents it generated were ostensibly analogous to expressions, a skill once dominated by humans, was possible.  Therefore, the idea of a ‘machine author’ had challenged this understructure of copyright law globally, spawned the need for legislative responses in both common law and civil law jurisdictions. Then Dr. He showed AI-generated work using his photo through google dream generator (https://deepdreamgenerator.com/)

There were three issues happened below:

-          Is there a need to regulate?

-          In what way can we offer copyright protection?

-          Is copyright the only solution?

Then Dr. He explained the concept of “Originality” that different countries had different requirements on their law.

There are two paths that one is subjective and the other one is objective.  Objective standard in assessing the originality of AI-generated contents: if the lowest degree of creativity can be found on the work, it is then considered original. (Focus on result/end product)

Dr. He though subjective path is more justifiable.  Subjective standard which believes that the creative process is decisive when assessing originality rather than the end product.

After that Dr. He discussed “Can AI own the copyright?” that only natural and legal person can enjoy copyright.  Another question was “Can we make machine the author?” There can be two approaches that legally recognize machine as copyright owner or assign the rights to human beings.  Who is the suitable right owner? Dr. He discussed that could include designer (programmer), operator, owner of the machine, co-ownership between designer and operator, and public domain.  Whether AI-generated works involved human input and to what degree would be crucial in determining it’s copyrighability, that is the question.  Dr. He summarized the current treatment that no way for machine to own copyright.

Finally, Dr. He discussed the future of AI-generated contents protection model in China.  Machine was not about to be regarded as an author in China but he added that could be considered the neighboring rights.

Q&A Session:

I captured a group photo of participants (~44).

Lastly, I asked a question that "If company and programmer has contract about copyrith of algorithm, so programmer set the algorithm to create different article/music. Could the programmer own the right under the contract?".  Dr. He said programmer may like a user for general purpose but programmer own the right of algorithm for specific purpose based on the contract.  However, the different articles or music generated by algorithm was not considered as human being creativity.

Reference:

CityU Staff Seminar series - https://www.cityu.edu.hk/slw/news/events.html

Poster - https://www.cityu.edu.hk/slw/lib/doc/events/Poster_20200819.jpg

Other CityU’s AI seminar:

20191101: CityU & PolyU Jointly Seminar on Attacks and Defenses on Machine Learning Services - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/11/cityu-polyu-jointly-seminar-on-attacks.html

20190912: CityU Seminar on the challenges and responses of AI to Public Management - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/09/cityu-seminar-on-challenges-and.html

20190814: CityU & NVIDIA Technology Sharing - AI Application and Research - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/08/cityu-nvidia-technology-sharing-ai.html

20190409: CityU & TFI Seminar – AI for Better Health and Wealth - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/04/cityu-tfi-seminar-ai-for-better-health.html

20190409: AI and E-Commerce: Ethical Conflicts《人工智能與電子商貿：倫理對弈》 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/04/ai-and-e-commerce-ethical-conflicts.html

20190322: CityU President's Lecture series - Big Data Analysis & AI: Opportunities & Challenges - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/03/cityu-presidents-lecture-series-big.html

20190227: CityU Seminar on Design of Accident Prevention System for LWR using ANN and HS Simulator - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/02/cityu-seminar-on-design-of-accident.html

20190128: CityU Distinguished Lecture on AI Enabled Personalized Theranotics - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/01/cityu-distinguished-lecture-on-ai.html

20190122: CityU Seminar on The First Step for AI-based Human-Like Language Understanding – Sentiment Analysis of Text - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/01/cityu-seminar-on-first-step-for-ai.html

20181227: CityU Distinguished Lecture - How to Make an Artificial Vision System Smart? - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2018/12/cityu-distinguished-lecture-how-to-make.html

20181114: CityU the 1st Workshop on Financial Data Analysis - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2018/11/cityu-1st-workshop-on-financial-data.html

20180804: HKSQ AGM Quality Innovation Seminar on “Extenics and AI Application” - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2018/08/hksq-agm-quality-innovation-seminar-on.html

20180607: CityU Workshop on AI in the Era of Big Data - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2018/06/cityu-workshop-on-ai-in-era-of-big-data.html