Florian Koempel (Queen Mary University of London: Centre for Commercial Law Studies) has posted Ecce Human! AI, Authorship and Attribution on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper takes a human-centred approach to copyright and generative AI in music. It first considers copyright protection for fully AI-generated and AI-assisted works and then addresses the subsequent question of authorship. The basic copyright principles are reasonably established. The more difficult question on AI assisted works is what part the human actually created, particularly where AI has been used repeatedly during the creative process. This leads to the main issue considered in the paper: attribution.
The paper looks at the role of writers and artists, publishers, CMOs, AI providers and platforms, as well as transparency and labelling requirements and developing provenance technologies. Each may hold relevant information, but nobody necessarily holds all the information. Writer or artist declarations remain the key starting point, but they depend on them knowing, and also truthfully stating, what happened. Technology can provide additional evidence, but it cannot (yet?) necessarily establish authorship or put a reliable percentage on the respective human and AI contributions. Attribution therefore requires co-operation between the different participants, while recognising what each can realistically be expected to do and at what cost.
Ultimately, the distinction between AI-generated, AI-assisted and human-created music matters for copyright, authorship and payment, but rather less to the listener. Copyright can determine protection and collective management payment, but neither what people hear nor what platforms recommend. Provided copyright is respected, information is available and fraud is addressed, AI-generated and human-created music will coexist. Whatever the legal dogma, consumer demand, mediated by platforms, will decide how much writers, artists and rights holders earn.
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