to Paradise” is a pixelated pastoral scene of train tracks running under a moss-flecked bridge. It was, according to its creator’s creator, drawn and named in 2012 by an artificial intelligence called DABUS . But earlier this month, a federal judge in the US decided that Stephen Thaler, DABUS’s inventor who listed his AI system as the artwork’s creator, can’t claim the copyright for the work. Thaler is appealing the decision.
The rise of generative AI, capable of producing convincing text, interpreting prompts to produce art, and manipulating huge amounts of data to design everything from pharmaceutical molecules to architectural plans, has led to profound questions about the nature of intellectual property—and, inevitably, to legal disputes. Authors, for example, have lined upfor training their systems on their writing without permission.
One of Thaler’s main supporters in his legal battles is Ryan Abbott, a professor of law and health sciences at the University of Surrey in the UK.Artificial Inventor Project