By Henrique Rocha, DPO, partner at Peck Advogados, with Adalbério Souza, Júlia Bessa Sanzi and Julia Duarte
Artistic works created by artificial intelligence and copyright protection
Freepik reproduction
Artistic works created by artificial intelligence and copyright protection
In 2016, the company Microsoft used Artificial Intelligence and algorithms to create a painting in the style of Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. The project called “The Next Rembrandt[1]”, responsible for creating the work, analyzed Rembrandt's 3 paintings using high-resolution 346D scans, making it possible to capture, through algorithms, the technique used by the artist, the typical features, the Dutch Baroque style and the color palette of the time. , generating a painting that imitates Rembrandt's style with great precision, but produced entirely through Artificial Intelligence and printed using a 3D printer.
The creation of artistic works through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology as exemplified previously, in addition to several other works created by technology, were only possible due to this technology feeding pre-existing data and copyright works during the learning process and training.
However, although artificial intelligence systems use artists' works for training, remuneration for these artists or image bank holders has not been a common practice in the industry.
For this reason, at the beginning of this year (2023), Getty Images, a company that offers image and video services, filed a lawsuit in the High Court in London against the company Stability AI, responsible for the generative AI tool “Stable Diffusion ”, which allows users to generate photorealistic images via text command.
The allegation is that Stability infringed Getty Images' intellectual property by illegally copying and processing millions of copyrighted images and their metadata without a license, pursuing its own commercial interests and violating copyright in content that is owned or depicted by Getty.
The company Stability is also being sued in the state of California, USA, through a lawsuit filed by artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz, who allege that the Stable Diffusion tool uses millions of images extracted from the internet “without the consent of original artists” to generate new copyright works.
Even though this is a new topic to be initially debated through the analysis of hitherto international demands, it is worth highlighting that Brazilian law no. 9.610/98, known as the Copyright Law, in its article 7, attributes copyright protection only to intellectual works created by the human spirit: “Protected intellectual works are creations of the spirit, expressed by any means or fixed on any support, tangible or intangible, known or invented in the future...".
For this reason, Brazilian doctrine maintains that unless there is a relevant degree of human intervention in the process of creating works created by artificial intelligence (AI) systems, there is no copyright protection. Furthermore, it is the authors' rights to request prior authorization for the use of their works in artificial intelligence training, as this can lead to direct profit for the platforms and harms the economic exploitation of the original work.
Therefore, in theory and until there is a substantial legislative change, works created by artificial intelligence do not have copyright protection under Brazilian legislation, since there is no presence of human creation, thus, such works are considered in the public domain .
Therefore, the use of copyright works for the development of generative AI systems must be authorized by the copyright holders, as it may harm the normal exploitation of the original work and cause harm to its holders.
By Adalbério Souza and Henrique Rocha
[1] Available in: https://news.microsoft.com/europe/features/next-rembrandt/. Accessed on: September 14, 2023.
“The town” festival features songs created by artificial intelligence: what is copyright protection like?
Reproduction O Globo
The music festival “The Town” had its first edition in Brazil, which took place on the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 9th and 10th of September 2023, at the Autódromo de Interlagos, in São Paulo. The event elevated the audience's technological experience by implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in several aspects.
Among the innovations in the field of security, for example, “The Town” had the help of robot dogs equipped with state-of-the-art sensors, as well as drones with computer vision, which ensured monitoring of the entire location in real time. .
Regarding the visual experience, on the electronic music stage, spectators interacted with avatars created by AI and watched shows with LED lights synchronized with the artists' movements through the use of algorithms. Furthermore, during the transition from one artist to another, AI-produced songs were played, further expanding the limits of musical creativity, a topic that is the subject of discussions around the world. After all, are works created by AI protected by copyright?
Recently, the discussion reached the American Court after the United States Copyright Office (US Copyright Office) refuse Stephan Thaler's request for copyright recognition on an algorithmically generated image. Thaler, CEO of Imagination Engines, argued that AI meets the criteria for authorship and therefore intellectual property rights should be recognized.
However, the judge in the case, Beryl Howell, maintained the administrative decision, emphasizing that work created by AI without any human intervention cannot be protected by copyright in the country, since only works made by human beings are entitled to claim, in terms of the law.
The controversy also reached Brazil, especially because the Copyright Law (Law No. 9.610/98) determines that the author of a literary, artistic or scientific work is a natural person, according to its article 11, a wording that refers to the same understanding adopted in the United States.
However, there is no doubt that the legal requirement regarding human intervention comes from the historical scenario in which the legislator was inserted when the law was drafted, a moment in which the reality of technology did not allow for the creation of a work by machines, which which leads to different currents regarding the applicability of copyright protection in this context.
However, in order for the legal system to follow the evolution of digital society, avoiding contradictory decisions and consequent legal uncertainty, the topic deserves to be regulated, as sought by bill no. 2.338/2023, still being processed in the National Congress.
By Júlia Bessa Sanzi and Henrique Rocha
Songs created by artificial intelligence are removed from streaming services.
Freepik reproduction
The use of technology in different sectors is growing every day and a recent invention that surprised the internet was a song in the voices of artists “Drake” and “The Weekend” created by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The song “Heart on My Sleeve” went viral on the social networking app TikTok, however, after all the repercussions, it was removed from services. streaming by Universal Music itself, holder of the rights of the artists involved. This occurred because, at the time, Universal Music asked music platforms to streaming that would block the training of AI platforms on the melodies and lyrics of their' copied songs.
In Brazil, the topic has also been discussed, especially in the case where fans of the artist “Matuê” created a song using his voice together with that of the band’s late lead singer “Charlie Brown Jr.” in a song called “Morte do Autotune”, a situation that raises questions regarding the legitimacy of using the voice of a deceased person, without explicit authorization.
In the Brazilian legal system, the Copyright Law (Law No. 9.610/98) applies only to works created by natural persons. Therefore, the question arises as to who would have the right to claim authorship of a digital work generated by Artificial Intelligence.
For the topic, jurists discuss three currents to be applied to the case, namely: (i) the work created by AI is in the public domain and, therefore, there is no need to talk about legal protection; (ii) the company that created the AI holds the copyright, as it is responsible for the coordinated application of the technology; and (iii) the user himself is the copyright holder, as he gives the commands to the tool so that the results are generated.
In any case, these are just discussions that are subject to change, since there is still no legislation on the use and responsibility of Artificial Intelligence in Brazil, given that PL 2338/2023, which provides for the use of Artificial Intelligence, is still being processed in Congress. National with no date for effective voting.
By Julia Duarte and Henrique Rocha.