Both real-world advances and outright speculations about artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have prompted scholars, policymakers, and others to ponder the implications of AI for copyright law and policy. The Copyright Office is hosting a symposium on "Copyright in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" on February 5 at the Library of Congress. And in 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office requested public comments on the impact of AI on copyrights and other forms of intellectual property (IP). Among the comments filed in response to the USPTO's request, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) offered a common sense take on the durability of basic copyright principles and the importance of maintaining clear rules regarding ownership and liability for infringement.
We may have more to say on AI and copyright the future. However, Free State Foundation President Randolph May and I have made the case – in Perspectives from FSF Scholars papers published in September 2019 and here in January 2020 – that copyright infringement is a strict liability tort and that an online platform provider's use of an automatic process in causing an infringement does not shield such providers from liability.
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