Advertisement
Artificial intelligence
TechTech Trends

Beijing court’s ruling that AI-generated content can be covered by copyright eschews US stand, with far-reaching implications on tech’s use

  • The Beijing Internet Court ruled that an AI-generated image in an intellectual property dispute was an artwork protected by copyright laws
  • That decision is expected have far-reaching implications for future AI copyright disputes, which could eventually benefit Chinese Big Tech companies

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
3
The Beijing Internet Court’s ruling has added fuel to heated arguments on whether artificial intelligence-generated content is protected by copyright laws. Photo: Shutterstock
Iris Dengin Shenzhen
The Beijing Internet Court has recognised the copyright for a piece of artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) in the first ruling of its kind in mainland China, where a growing number of enterprises are caught up in a frenzy to advance use of the technology in transforming industries and improving people’s daily lives.
Advertisement
In a decision issued on Monday, the court said that a picture, generated via US start-up StabilityAI’s text-to-image software Stable Diffusion, should be considered an artwork under the protection of copyright laws based on the “originality” and intellectual input of its human creator, according to a redacted document of the ruling shared by IPcode, a legal industry account on social media platform WeChat.
The intellectual property (IP) infringement lawsuit was initiated in May by the plaintiff surnamed Li, who used Stable Diffusion to create an image of a young Asian lady and posted it on China’s Instagram-like platform Xiaohongshu. Li sued a blogger surnamed Liu for allegedly using the image without permission in a post on Baidu-owned Baijiahao, a Chinese content-sharing platform.

The Beijing Internet Court ruled that the AI-generated image was an artwork and 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. Its decision is open for appeal at the Beijing Intellectual Property Court.

The original artificial intelligence-generated image of an Asian lady, left, is at the centre of an intellectual property dispute presided over by the Beijing Internet Court. To the right of the picture are three images generated during the process of creating the final one that was the subject of infringement. Photo: Xiaohongshu/Stable Diffusion AI
The original artificial intelligence-generated image of an Asian lady, left, is at the centre of an intellectual property dispute presided over by the Beijing Internet Court. To the right of the picture are three images generated during the process of creating the final one that was the subject of infringement. Photo: Xiaohongshu/Stable Diffusion AI

The court said Li “made a certain degree of intellectual investment” in selecting prompt texts, setting up parameters and designing the presentation, among various inputs.

Advertisement
Advertisement