WORK PRODUCED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, COPYRIGHT AND THE CONCEPT OF OWNERSHIP
I. INTRODUCTION
Artificial Intelligence, one of the groundbreaking technological developments, is becoming more and more involved in our lives every day. The works and products produced by Artificial Intelligence bring along discussions that can be considered as the subject of intellectual property law. The first of the discussions, which can be grouped under 2 subjects, is whether artificial intelligence can be considered to be an 'author' in terms of the product and content it produces, and the second is whether it can benefit from patents and copyrights. In addition, this article will analyze whether artificial intelligence can be considered as a copyright owner and the regulations it is subject to in terms of copyrights by comparing Turkish law to other legal systems.
II. THE CONCEPT OF “AUTHOR” IN TERMS OF THE PRODUCTS PRODUCED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND WHETHER THEY CAN BE SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT
1. Evaluation in terms of Foreign Legal Systems
Some laws recognize - directly or indirectly - that the creator of a work must be a human being in order to own patents and copyrights. An example of this is the Feilin and Baidu case. In Feilin v. Baidu, the court ruled that in order for a work to benefit from copyright protection, it must be produced by a natural person and that the copyright ownership of products produced by Artificial Intelligence cannot be attributed to the programmer or creator. Another example is the case of Thaler v. Perlmutter. In the judicial decisions in the Anglo-Saxon Legal System, it is stated that only humans can produce works that can be subject to copyright and that artificial intelligence cannot be considered as the producer of the work.
However, in some judicial decisions, although it does not seem possible to make any registration on behalf of Artificial Intelligence, it will be seen that artificial intelligence is named as the inventor and that this protection can be granted to its creator (Tencent and Yingxun v. Dreamwriter). Likewise, the requirement of “human creator” is not explicitly pursued in the Chinese Laws to which the court that rendered the judgment is subject to. The case was between Tencent Tecnology (Beijing) Co. Ltd. (plaintiff) and Shanghai Yingxun Technology Co. (defendant). Tencent developed Dreamwriter, which is a data and algorithm-based advanced typing robot, to meet the needs of large companies. After its development, Dreamwriter analyzed the economy using stock market data and converted it into a news text that could be published, with a statement at the end of the text: “This article was automatically generated by the Tencent robot Dreamwriter.” It was published with an explanation at the end of the text. On the same day, the defendant Yingxun Technology Co. also published the news article on their website. Claiming that the rights to the published news article belonged to them, the plaintiff Tencent filed a lawsuit and made a claim. The court first evaluated whether the article would be considered a work under copyright law. In the evaluation asserted by the Court, it was determined that the article “is an intellectual work”, “has a certain originality”, and “meets the requirement of particularity, which is important for the condition of being considered as a work” as a result of considering the template, data analysis, and the form of expression. As a result of the said judgment, a judicial decision has emerged that a news article created by Artificial Intelligence can be considered a work. Another question is who will own the copyrights of this work? In order to answer this question, the court questioned who created the artificial intelligence that created the article and ruled that the company represented by the company teams that played a role in the creation of the article should use the copyright in question. In This regard, there are two possibilities as to whether the product produced by artificial intelligence can benefit from copyright protection. Either AI will be considered a natural person or Copyright Law will recognize non-human creators.
In a report published by the EU, the EU evaluated the introduction of an e-personality concept specific to artificial intelligence and the possibility of creating a fund on their behalf in order to meet their rights and debts. However, there is a majority of opposing views on the issue of personhood for artificial intelligence. While the debates on whether Artificial Intelligence should have personality or not, to whom the status of ownership as the creator of the work will be recognized, and whether Artificial Intelligence can benefit from copyright or not continue, this issue has not yet been resolved by legal regulations. Legal regulations do not provide general and concretized suggestions. In addition, if Artificial Intelligence produces a work that may be subject to copyright and this work infringes another person's copyright, the question of who the party whose copyright is infringed will show as a defendant is also in need of explanation. This is because it is clear that Artificial Intelligence is not recognized as a person and cannot be named as a defendant not only in the Turkish legal system but also in any other legal system in the world. In addition, how and by which means the Artificial Intelligence will assert its rights and the necessity of appointing a representative are issues that need to be answered and require a detailed regulation in order to fill the legal gap.
2. Evaluation in terms of Turkish Law
In terms of Turkish Law, according to the definition set forth in Article 1(b) of the Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works (“FSEK”), a work is defined as “all kinds of intellectual and artistic works that bear the characteristics of their owner and are considered as works of science and literature, music, fine arts or cinema”.
In addition to the relevant article of the Law, according to the opinion in the doctrine; the creativity and intellectual characteristics of the work created contain only the qualities specific to real persons. Therefore, according to the FSEK and the doctrinal opinions, it is argued that works can only be created by real persons. In addition to this, in the decision of the 11th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation dated 04.02.2015 and numbered 2014/16277E., 2015/1285 K.; after defining the “author” as the person who created the work in accordance with Article 1 and 2(3) of FSEK, it was ruled that a legal entity that is not a creative person cannot be the author, and it was ruled that the author can only be a real person. In line with the FSEK, doctrinal opinions and the decision of the Supreme Court, the practice in the Turkish Legal System is similar to the Anglo Saxon legal system, and there is an inference that since Artificial Intelligence is not a real person, it cannot be considered as the author and cannot infringe copyright or be the subject of the infringement.
III. CONCLUSION
Artificial Intelligence, which has entered our lives with the development of technology, has brought copyright issues, legal uncertainties and ethical debates. Without clarifying the ambiguous issues regarding the legal status and personality of artificial intelligence, it will undoubtedly not be expected to make legal regulations in this field. Legal systems around the world have adopted different stances and regulations in terms of the personality status of Artificial Intelligence and whether it can be subject to copyright infringement and whether it can be the owner of the work. The lack of uniformity and the lack of clear and inclusive regulations on the personality and copyright ownership of Artificial Intelligence products in Turkey and internationally have resulted in the fact that it continues to be a subject of debate and unresolved from a legal point of view.
Determining the rights over the content and products created by Artificial Intelligence and addressing them with detailed regulations in terms of copyrights is an important step not only from a legal perspective, but also from many ethical or social aspects. For this reason, it is of great importance to fill the legal gap in this field with detailed and comprehensive legal regulations.