Generative AI and US Intellectual Property Law

Abstract

The rapidity with which generative AI has been adopted and advanced has raised legal and ethical questions related to the impact on artists rights, content production, data collection, privacy, accuracy of information, and intellectual property rights. Recent administrative and case law challenges have shown that generative AI software systems do not have independent intellectual property rights in the content that they generate. It remains to be seen whether human content creators can retain their intellectual property rights against generative AI software, its developers, operators, and owners for the misappropriation of the work of human creatives, given the metes and bounds of existing law. Early signs from various courts are mixed as to whether and to what degree the results generated by AI models meet the legal standards of infringement under existing law.