The Next Rembrandt AI

The Next Rembrandt AI

Presented by- Dhriti Yadav
Agenda

• About ‘The Next Rembrandt’

• The Issue related to AI Generated
Content with Copyright Regime
• Legal Options
• Granting Copyright to AI- Pros and
Cons
• Commercial Impact
• Future Ahead

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 About ‘The Next Rembrandt’

“The Next Rembrandt” is the name given to the painting that now sits along with
its namesake painter’s most famous works in Paris, and it was created entirely by
an AI program. The Next Rembrandt: ING is a Dutch multinational banking group
that partnered with Microsoft, The Rembrandt House Museum, and others to
create an algorithm that analyzed over 168,000 fragments from over 350 of
Rembrandt’s works and, in part thanks to facial recognition technology, created a
completely new and unique work of art that emulates Rembrandt’s style and
technique yet remains a wholly new and original piece of art.

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 The Issue related to AI Generated Content
with Copyright Regime
The issue involves the creative steps that are needed when creating a
work. In the past, most works of art created with the help of
computers clearly had copyrights belonging to the programmers who
told the computer what to do; all actions were specifically
programmed and attributable to human activity, hence computer
program was merely a ‘tool’. However, today’s programs are informed
only by vague parameters set by programmers, and using systems
called “artificial neural networks” (“neural nets”) to learn and create on
their own. Programs are now capable of taking creative steps that in
the past have only been attributable to human activity, and the law
regarding copyright may not yet have caught up to these advances in
technology.

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 Legal Options
There are two ways in which copyright law can deal with works where human interaction is minimal or non-
existent. It can either deny copyright protection for works that have been generated by a computer or it can
attribute authorship of such works to the creator of the program.
Conferring copyright in works generated by artificial intelligence has never been specifically prohibited. However,
there are indications that the laws of many countries are not amenable to non-human copyright. In the United
States, for example, the Copyright Office has declared that it will “register an original work of authorship, provided
that the work was created by a human being.” (Naruto Case)
The second option, that of giving authorship to the programmer, is evident in a few countries such as the Hong
Kong (SAR), India, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK. This approach is best encapsulated in UK copyright law,
section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA), which states:
“In the case of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work which is computer-generated, the author shall be taken to be
the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken.”

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Granting Copyright to AI-
Pros and Cons
Article I of the US Constitution expresses states that
“Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the
progress of science and useful arts by securing for
limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive
right to their respective writings and discoveries.” This
clause supports the notion that innovation is
the driving force behind human progress. The exclusive
right provided prevents others from using IP and
provides the owner with the ability to generate a
benefit. In that vein, one reason that we may be
concerned about AI copyright ownership is that AI does
not have any of those needs nor can it take advantage
of IP benefits. However, the threat of AI copyright
narrowing the playing field for innovation may create a
more competitive market for expression, thus
advancing human progress. 7
 Commercial Impact
One could argue that this distinction is not important, but the manner in
which the law tackles new types of machine-driven creativity could have far-
reaching commercial implications. Artificial intelligence is already being used
to generate works in music, journalism and gaming. These works could in
theory be deemed free of copyright because they are not created by a
human author. As such, they could be freely used and reused by anyone.
That would be very bad news for the companies selling the works. Imagine
you invest millions in a system that generates music for video games, only to
find that the music is not protected by law and can be used without payment
by anyone in the world.

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 Future Ahead…

Monumental advances in computing and the sheer amount of available computational power may well make
the distinction moot; when you give a machine the capacity to learn styles from large datasets of content, it
will become ever better at mimicking humans. And given enough computing power, soon we may not be able
to distinguish between human-generated and machine-generated content. We are not yet at that stage, but if
and when we do get there, we will have to decide what type of protection, if any, we should give to emergent
works created by intelligent algorithms with little or no human intervention. Although copyright laws have
been moving away from originality standards that reward skill, labour and effort, perhaps we can establish an
exception to that trend when it comes to the fruits of sophisticated artificial intelligence. The alternative
seems contrary to the justifications for protecting creative works in the first place.
Granting copyright to the person who made the operation of artificial intelligence possible seems to be the
most sensible approach, with the UK’s model looking the most efficient. Such an approach will ensure that
companies keep investing in the technology, safe in the knowledge that they will get a return on their
investment.

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Thank you