AI copyright infringement article now available for comment

Just another Van Gogh

I have now uploaded my latest article on copyright and artificial intelligence to SSRN, and I’m looking for constructive feedback (the article can be found here or if SSRN isn’t working, here). I’ve entitled it “A Scanner Darkly: Copyright Infringement in Artificial Intelligence Inputs and Outputs” in part as a companion piece to my 2017 (and updated 2020) article “Do Androids Dream of Electric Copyright?“, keeping with the Philip K Dick theme.

This is a monster article at 16k words, and that is after cutting and condensing it quite a lot. It’s been in the works in some shape or form since late 2019. The pandemic took its toll on my health due to long covid, so it was left unfinished for most of 2020, I started working on it again in 2021, but then NFTs took over my research life. When I came back to it during the summer of last year, I had a better idea of where it was heading.

A few things started happening that have helped shape it in its present form. The subject has exploded in interest, and a few blog posts on the issue of AI and copyright started getting attention, so the structure clicked in my head, and I have been working on it since. The main problem has to be to keep it manageable, there’s so much happening that I cannot cover at all, such as all of the ongoing litigation.

So I am putting it out there. I’m still not happy with it, it probably is filled with errors, the grammar is atrocious, but if I keep waiting to perfect it I will never send it out for review. It’s now in your hands dear readers, do be kind.

I’m particularly interested in getting feedback on the technology. The intended audiences for the paper are legal scholars, research students, practitioners, policymakers, and anyone who wants to understand the question of AI and copyright infringement from a UK perspective (with a bit of EU and US cases for comparison). It isn’t intended as a thorough technical paper, but I do hope to explain the technology well enough so that legal audiences can understand it as well. Have I managed to convey it properly? Am I missing something important?

Most of the law is up in the air, so I try to support everything thoroughly, but maybe I’m also missing something. This is a hotly debated topic online, I’m trying to stay above all that.

Thanks in advance for anyone who will read it, that’s what I strive for.

Edit: Final version of the paper has been published in GRUR International as a peer-reviewed open access article.