The Legal Complications of AI Technology: Plagiarism & IP Rights

Last week, I published an article about ChatGPT for academic use and whether it should be allowed. In today’s follow-up article, we’ll specifically address the legal complications of this AI technology, especially plagiarism and intellectual property rights.

Let’s start with the definition of intellectual property or IP for short. IP is a category of property and includes unique creations of the human mind. The intellectual property gets divided into many parts. The best-known ones are patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Anything could be some person’s intellectual property, like art, inventions, designs, and more. And because they are unique to that person’s hard work and thought, naturally, we should protect that individual’s (or group’s) right to that IP. That’s how we get intellectual property rights or IPR.

The creator’s IPR gets violated when another person who doesn’t have the rights to that piece of IP uses it without permission or recognition, which is considered illegal. The owner of the IP can sue the violator in court. I should note here that IP can be a published piece of literature, an article, or an essay. And that’s what makes legal matters complicated regarding AI engines like ChatGPT.

If you read my previous article about AI (and if not, please go back and read it first), you might remember how chatbots work. These engines use deep-learning algorithms, which enable them to learn a lot from large databases (which include whole parts of the internet) and then select helpful information to generate a response to the user’s prompt.

It’s a quick and helpful tool for all varieties of users. However, there are also the risks that these AI engines could infringe intellectual property rights. ChatGPT’s developer OpenAI knows this and has precautions to prevent the engine from unknowingly violating copyright and shut down accounts repeatedly requesting infringement.

Okay, that ends the part of ChatGPT possibly infringing IPR. What about a user’s use of content generated by AI engines? Is using ChatGPT-content violating OpenAI’s copyrights? Many people ask the question of who owns ChatGPT-generated content. Well, on OpenAI’s terms of use page (https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use), it writes: “Subject to your compliance with these Terms, OpenAI hereby assigns to you all its right, title and interest in and to Output,” with ‘Output’ meaning the response based upon the user’s input. It implies that OpenAI owns ChatGPT-generated content, but you are free to use it, which is what the “assigns to you all its right, title and interest in and to Output” part undirectly implies.

However, according to Studio Legal (https://studiolegal.com.au/blog/chatgpt-and-copyright-your-key-questions-answered/), the output generated by ChatGPT isn’t entitled to any copyright. Why is that? It’s because, if you read the definition of intellectual property rights carefully, rights get given to the human who created that thing. So if the creator isn’t a human, then theoretically, the creation isn’t entitled to copyright. Though it has, unsurprisingly, previously gotten challenged in court.

One famous example involved a series of disputes from 2011 to 2018 about the copyright status of selfies taken by the Celebes crested macaque named Naruto using camera equipment owned by British nature photographer David John Slater. One dispute, Naruto v. Slater (2016), involved the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who filed on the monkey’s behalf and argued that Slater, Blurb, Inc. (“publisher” of a book by Slater containing the “Monkey Selfies”), and Wildlife Personalities, Ltd. (a UK company that with Slater, claimed authorship of the Monkey Selfies) violated Naruto’s copyright by displaying and selling copies of the Monkey Selfies. In that particular case, Judge William H. Orrick ruled that Naruto didn’t have the copyright to any of those selfies.

It seems to have nothing to do with artificial intelligence. But it’s very similar. Both ChatGPT and Naruto are non-human but created something unique. So should OpenAI or ChatGPT itself own the copyright to its content? Even though it hasn’t yet gotten challenged in court, some believe that that day isn’t far away, and we’ll relive an AI version of Naruto v. Slater.

My suggestion is to be careful when using these AI engines. Try not to prompt things that may infringe the copyright of creators or publish AI-generated content. Artificial intelligence is indeed becoming quite intelligent, and I believe the best way to use it is as a tool, not abuse it or use it for undesigned uses. That’s the end of this production from the New News Newsminute. Thank you for reading, and tune in next time for more.