The Impact of AI on Intellectual Property Law

How Does AI Endanger Your Business’s IP?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage right now because it has allowed non-creatives to make creative content. That sounds good on paper, but consider how AI creates content. You may find that AI isn’t making creative content so much as stealing from others and mashing them together. And if your business isn’t careful, AI may steal your intellectual property (IP) like it has so many others.

The intellectual property attorneys at Emerson Thomson Bennett will explain the dangers of AI and how it can infringe on intellectual property.

How Does AI Steal IP to Create Its Content?

AI developers don’t manually code every option that their program comes up with. AI does not work as seen in popular media; AI cannot generate unique thoughts. Rather, they use data that’s been pumped into them by the developer and try to combine the data in such a way that it provides a result close to the prompt they were given.

Some AI engines are not limited by what developers give them. Some are connected to search engines and the internet such as ChatGPT, so they can take publicly available information. The problem with either is that developers have been given the AI data they’ve taken without permission, or the AI takes it.

This data can come in many different forms, including text, imaging, and video graphics.

Is This Intellectual Property Infringement?

This is a complicated question. People can create art that’s inspired by art before it. Even businesses will reference other businesses, events, songs, books, films, etc, in marketing and their brand without it being infringement. So to be a case of infringement, the AI is creating something that isn’t that different from the data it’s stolen.

By this metric, copyright infringement would be on a case-by-case basis. Written work is easier to catch and prove with modern plagiarism technology already working well to spot AI IP theft. Image recognition is more difficult to catch theft in visual works. 

It’s harder to see the source data for an image that’s the culmination of multiple images. If an AI steals a graphic from your brand, it’s likely also stealing from several others. Together, each different IP it steals from helps hide the fact that is stolen from another.

What Kind of IP Does AI Usually Steal?

AI doesn’t steal or plagiarize data information to complete functional tasks. It’s when AI is used to create content for art, marketing, or information without permission from the original IP owner. For business owners, AI may be using your:

• Logo art
• Slogan/motto/tagline
• Brand characters
• Blogs/press releases
• Video and graphic ads

When you put time and money into developing your brand, you should be the only one profiting from it.

What Laws are Forming in Response to AI?

Currently, there are no uniform federal laws that protect businesses or individuals from AI. There are several being put through the legislative process, but none have been passed yet. What we have are many specific state laws that restrict AI in different ways. 

There have been several cases that will like set legal precedents for how AI-generated works are to be treated. For example, a recent lawsuit by Stephen Thaler against the United States Copyright Office ended with the court deeming that works created by AI were not copyrightable. Based on the Copyright Act, copyrightable material must be created by a human being. Stephen Thaler’s work that AI created could not receive a valid copyright. 

This means that AI-generated content may not be legal to monetize. There should soon be a legal precedent that can be used against AI works that use your own. This is not intellectual property infringement in the traditional way. However, it does help us safeguard your intellectual property.

Contact Emerson Thomson Bennett For Help Defending Against AI Works

To make sure that AI isn’t stealing from you, you need the help of an intellectual property law firm that is experienced in protecting IP and researching new laws and technology that may help or threaten it.

You can find that experience at Emerson Thomson Bennett. Our IP attorneys stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and have tools that we can use to find AI works that are infringing on your IP. For more information on how we can help you and your IP, contact us today.