AI Can Now Make Art, But Can Indian Laws Protect Our Artists?

Isn't all art inspired from someone else? So can creators claim copyright over AI using their style? We answer.

One thing that definitely needs to be considered while making laws on AI are privacy concerns.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

(This story is being re-published from The Quint's archives in light of American authors suing OpenAI in a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that the company misused their works to "train" its popular generative artificial-intelligence system ChatGPT.)

One of the two poems above, is written by Rabindranath Tagore and the other  - by Google’s AI chatbot ‘Bard.’

The prompt we put into the generative AI tool was simple: “Please write a poem on death using Rabindranath Tagore's style.”

While you think about which one is the “original” and which one is “AI-generated," here’s more food for thought:

When the poems seem so eerily similar and AI can copy anything (provided it is fed the right kind of data), can firms continue using the work of writers, artists, singers to train their AI models without the creators' consent?

The European Union, in a draft bill, is attempting to answer this question. But, where does India stand?

This article is a part of 'AI Told You So', a special series by The Quint that explores how Artificial Intelligence is changing our present and how it stands to shape our future. Click here to view the full collection of stories in the series.

Can You Sue AI For Trying To Copy Your Work in India?

No.

Experts The Quint spoke to pointed out that if and when India considers accommodating AI-generated content into its copyright laws, it will have to remember that the law (The Copyrights Act) protects just the tangible work of expression and not the ideas, concepts or theories that lead to that.

“When it comes to writing, can a writer really claim copyright over AI copying their style? Essentially, isn’t all writing inspired from someone else’s style? This is why laws protect the tangible work, not the process that leads to it,” Karmanya Dev Sharma, a Delhi-based Intellectual Property Rights lawyer, said. 

“Generative AI is a simplistic model of the human brain. Just like artists or writers, derive their style from thousands of images or written work, so does AI. It is fed data sets over and over again for it to be able to register it and produce something similar,” Vikas Saxena, an independent tech researcher, explained.

But, while India is yet to see a case of this kind, it hasn't deterred creators in other countries from filing cases claiming that AI companies have violated their intellectual property rights.

So What Are These Cases About?

In January, US artists Sarah Anderson, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz filed a copyright infringement complaint against Stable diffusion, Midjourney and DreamUp (three of the most popular art generators) for using billions of copyrighted images for training itself without the consent or knowledge of the artists of the original images.

While this was happening, Stock photo provider Getty images filed a lawsuit against Stability AI (the company which created Stable Diffusion, an AI-based system for generating images from text inputs) for copying several of its photos without a license and using them to train the software to generate more accurate depictions based on user prompts.

"While copyright can only be claimed on tangible work and not 'style', in these cases what the creators are trying to convey is that their work is being 'copied' without consent to generate more similar images. That's another way to sue these companies over violation of their Intellectual Property rights," Anand Nishanth, a lawyer specialising in IP rights, pointed out.

During the more recent Writers’ Guild Strike in America, the unions demanded the regulation of “material produced using artificial intelligence or similar technologies."

Meanwhile, AI tools which train themselves from large sets of text and visual data on the internet will have to disclose any copyrighted material they use to develop their system, once an early European Union agreement, that could potentially become the world’s first set of laws regulating Artificial Intelligence, is implemented.

What Now?

According to what Nishanth told The Quint, “One of the ways to go about it is to issue a commercial license for the material it (the AI) uses and compensate the creators.”

For instance, Shutterstock plans on creating a fund to pay artists whose work AI companies will use to train their models.

The other thing that definitely needs to be considered while making laws on AI are privacy concerns.

“Anything that is my identifier and is being used without my consent is an infringement to my fundamental right to privacy. So, someone using my voice can be a violation of the said right," Samya Gupta, a Delhi-based tech lawyer, pointed out.

Noting, however, that despite privacy being a fundamental right, India does not have enough laws yet to upholster it, she said: "it is perhaps essential to factor privacy concerns in too."

Additionally, law makers ought to ponder over this question as well:

“Even if the AI firm pays artists for the license, this will potentially be a single-use license, but generative AI can then go on to generate millions of images by using just facets of the photograph it has licensed. Plus, eventually there will be no way of knowing which original image the AI has referenced. What happens then?"

Vikas Saxena

Let’s Turn It Around: Can AI Claim Copyright?

Interestingly, while India is yet to see a case where artists have sued generative AI platforms over copyright claims, an AI firm has sought copyright (for the AI) over an artwork.

In 2020, the Indian Copyright Office rejected an application which sought to list image-generating AI (RAGHAV) as the sole author of an artwork.

But, in another application related to the same app, the office gave the go-ahead to list RAGHAV as the co-author along with another (human) person. Immediately after, the office issued a withdrawal notice and the case continues to be undecided.

“Deciding this will be difficult, because right now our laws only include a legal person. If we were to imagine a scenario where AI can claim copyright, are we saying that the software has rights?”

Karmanya Dev Sharma

"The AI space is evolving really fast and our laws definitely need to keep up. Questions about AI and Intellectual Property Rights will need to be addressed soon," he added.

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