Rebecca Beyer, Harvard Law Today; Copyright law ‘struggling’ to parse AI’s ascendancy
"Deferring hard decisions about which kinds of machine-assisted creative works can be copyrighted over nearly 250 years has made it harder to ascertain whether works produced with the help of artificial intelligence can receive legal protection, according to Harvard Law School Professor Rebecca Tushnet...
Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, spoke as part of a panel discussion, “Copyright in AI Outputs: Who Owns AI-Created Works?,” that was presented by HLS Beyond in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s March decision to deny certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter, a case in which lower courts upheld the Copyright Office’s decision not to issue a copyright to an AI-generated image because “copyright law … requires human authorship.” Matt Kristoffersen ’27 moderated the discussion, which included Boston University School of Law Professor Jessica Silbey, Harvard Law Professor Christopher T. Bavitz, and an extensive Q&A session with audience members."
