Philosophy in the Community: Generative AI and Intellectual Property Rights

Philosophy in the Community is a free lecture and discussion series sponsored by the USask Department of Philosophy. Learn more.

Date: Friday, Nov. 14
Time: 7 pm
Location: Emmanuel Anglican Church,
607 Dufferin Ave. (The Refinery)

Free and open to the public.

About this event

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) works by learning underlying patterns in existing data and then uses those patterns to generate new content, such as text, images, or music. In this talk, Will Buschert will look at two main questions.

First, do GenAIs wrongfully infringe the copyright of works created by human beings that have been incorporated into GenAI training data? (Or, as some critics have put it, are GenAIs ‘stealing’ from human artists, writers, and composers?) Referencing the two most widely-accepted moral justifications for intellectual property rights, and some recent U.S. court cases, Buschert will argue that the answer, at least in general, is "no."

Second, can GenAIs themselves be bearers of intellectual property rights – i.e., can a GenAI rightly hold a copyright (or, potentially, a patent) in its works? Buschert will argue that the answer is (probably) ‘yes’. These conclusions may provide an occasion for reconsidering the moral justifications of intellectual property rights in the first place.

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