Artificial Intelligence (or AI) is a buzzword of our time. AI can come handy from understanding any topic to writing down something creative and presenting them as our own. But have we considered who would be the copyright owner of these AI generated creative works and what could be the potential legal consequences of using AI generated works as our own?

No international instrument on intellectual property rights clearly spells out how computer-generated works (CGWs) shall be protected. However, some jurisdictions such as the UK, China or the EU have advanced in this regard. Section 9(3) of Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 in the UK, provides that the human author of any intellectual property created by computer is the person who makes the necessary arrangements for the creation or completion of the work. Section 178 further adds that CGWs is work created by computer in circumstances where there is no human intervention. Therefore, by interpretation, the human author could be a programmer, a user who inputs data or anyone who assembles the conditions for the computer-generated work to be produced. The UK is one among only few countries to provide such copyright protection to CGWs. Chinese laws do not have any clear provisions regarding AI generated work; however, the courts in China have played an important role in defining the copyright of any CGWs. In two leading cases Feilin v Baidu and Tencent v Yinxun case, the court held that human involvement and originality are the key factors to providing copyright protection to CGWs. China's recent regulations for generative AI came into force in August 2023 requiring AI-Generated work to be properly labelled so that there is proper attribution (i.e., means it will enable us to understand which was created by AI itself and which by human author).

The EU enacted the first comprehensive law on AI, the AI Act 2023 which indirectly supports the proper management and attribution of AI-generated works, helping to clarify and enforce copyright protections in the context of AI.

Within the Bangladeshi legal framework, there is no definite answer to copyright queries regarding works generated with help of AI. Copyright of literary works, information technology-based digital works, and artistic work is protected by section 14(1) (a), section 14(1)(b), and section 14(1) (c) of Copyright Act 2023, respectively. According to section 15, generally, the person who creates a work is the first owner of the copyright for that work. For information technology-based digital works, the person or group who appoints (niyogkaari) to complete the work, is the first owner of the copyright, unless there is a different agreement in place.

In sum, copyright protection of CGWs varies across jurisdiction. There is no single solution on who would get the copyright ownership of CGWs— it could be the program owner or the programmer or the user or none but the Algorithm itself or no owner and the AI-Generated work will fall under public domain. For regulating legal matters regarding AI we can either use a sui generis system or build upon and expand the existing laws. As the AI is a very dynamic and complex system to identify the owner of any work a sui generis system would serve better for dealing with legal issues related to AI.

Fabliha Mahzabin Rohman, Law graduate, Bangladesh University of Professionals