The Fourth Industrial Revolution is propelled by data and builds on well-known technologies such as big data, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI). These new frontier technologies pose unprecedented challenges that go to the heart of the traditional notions of copyright law and policy.

Copyright law reform focuses mainly on harnessing the potential benefits of a new technology or on preventing the erosion of rights posed by a specific technological development. In the case of AI, issues related to new benefits focus on the copyrightability of AI outputs and machine learning as well as the blurring of the boundaries of human authorship in the case of AI-assisted creations.

Some scholars have questioned whether copyright is the right framework to regulate AI outputs as it is deemed to be contradictory to copyright’s main function of offering an enabling environment for human creativity to flourish.

In this seminar Professor Pistorius explored these issues turning to functional equivalence and media neutrality in offering some avenues for addressing the implications of AI outputs for copyright law and policy.

Professor Shubha Ghosh from Syracuse University also joined the seminar as a discussant.

The seminar was followed by the AGM of the Asian Pacific Copyright Association.