The challenge countries face regulating AI and copyright

AI’s rapid evolution presents a complex challenge for countries attempting to legislate the intersection of copyright and AI. Given the inherently global nature of both AI development and the creative industries it impacts, a patchwork of national laws risks creating significant legal friction and uncertainty.

One hurdle is the varied approaches to copyright. Some countries, like the US, lean towards a utilitarian "author's right" aimed at incentivizing all creation, while others such as Europe, emphasize "moral rights" that protect the creator's personal connection to their work. Yet others use a more artistic test type approach to copyright.  Add to this the tension between countries that are leading the AI revolution being some of the great content creators.

This week AI company Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a US class-action lawsuit by book authors who say it took pirated copies of their works from the LibGen site to train its Claude AI chatbot.

For now there is no international consensus on issues such as AI-generated works' copyrightability, or whether training AI models on copyrighted data constitutes infringement. Many countries are wrestling with fair use and text and data mining exceptions. Some including Japan and Singapore have enacted data mining exceptions. In South Korea home of the Korean Wave of content protecting creators from AI replicating their styles or works without consent, is a concern echoed globally by artists and writers.

The global reach of AI models, trained on vast datasets often sourced internationally, means that an AI developed in one country might produce outputs that infringe copyright in another, depending on local laws. Hong Kong experts commented recently after China enacted rules requiring AI content to be identified, that it is too small for independent laws to regulate AI on its own.

Organizations like OECD are exploring harmonized approaches and standards for AI data use, while the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has called for coordinated, market-driven standards to reduce regulatory fragmentation.