Gregory J. Krabacher, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Columbus office, authored an article in ILN IP Insider, titled “Charting a Course on AI Policy: The U.S. Copyright Office Speaks!”
Following is an excerpt:
Recently, the U.S. Copyright Office published the second of an intended three-part report entitled “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence.” Here are those three parts:
- Part 1: Digital Replicas (aka “Deep Fakes”), published July 31, 2024;
- Part 2: Copyrightability, published January 29, 2025; and
- Part 3: Legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works, licensing considerations, and the allocation of any potential liability, publication date to be decided.
Collectively, this report – I’ll refer to it here as the “AI Report” – is intended to provide the Copyright Office’s perspective on fundamental questions for copyright law and policy implicated by a technology described by the Office as presenting both “exciting opportunities” and potentially “existential” threats.
As framed by Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director U.S. Copyright Office, in her forward to publication of Part 1 of the AI Report, these fundamental questions include:
To what extent will AI-generated content replace human authorship? How does human creativity differ in nature from what AI systems can generate, now or in the future? What does this mean for the incentive-based foundation of the U.S. copyright system? In what ways can the technology serve as a valuable tool to amplify human creativity and ultimately promote science and the arts? How do we respect and reward human creators without impeding technological progress?
The AI Report builds on the Copyright Office’s intensive focus on AI issues in recent years. As previously reported in ILN IP Insider, the Copyright Office published guidance on March 12, 2023, entitled “Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence.” This document continues to guide Copyright Office staff and is a must read for any copyright lawyer practicing before the Office.
Later that same year, on August 30, 2023, the Office issued a notice of inquiry (NOI) requesting comments on copyright law and policy issues arising from the development and use of AI systems. More than 10,000 responses were received from a broad range of perspectives, including comments from all 50 U.S. States and 67 countries. Notably, the Copyright Office’s work in this area pre-dates President Biden’s sweeping Executive Order No. 14110 on the topic of Artificial Intelligence and continues after the revocation of this Order by the next administration.
