Can Artificial Intelligence be granted Autorship?

The decision raises fundamental questions about copyright law, such as the definition of the author and the characteristics of the creative process leading to the creation of a work that enjoys copyright protection. The Office explained that the artwork, created using the Midjourney Image program and regardless of the fact that the applicant’s input amounted to more than 600 commands (known as “prompts”), is not the result of human creativity. However, the Office did not rule out the possibility of recognizing copyright rights to an individual creator of such a result – the applicant would thus have to limit his claim to those elements of the work that reflect the human creative process and not those parts generated and performed by AI.

Clearly, this decision will significantly influence the understanding of the necessary (creative) role of a human in the creation of AI-generated work. These requirements differ across legal systems and are more precisely described in the contribution by Maja Bogataj Jančič in the monograph “Pravo in umetna inteligenca: vprašanje etike, človekovih pravic in družbene škode”, published in 2021 by the Institute for Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana.