The Flattening of Creative Industries?

Regulation of creative markets without scarcity of production and distribution requires a gradual shift of copyright law from stimulating production to preserving equal opportunities for access to creative markets as well as protecting leeway for personal creativity of authors, thus fueling the diversity and quality of copyrightable output. This is particularly relevant regarding the emerging use of AI in creative markets. The paper provides a doctrinal and policy perspective specifically on possible copyright protection for more or less AI-based 'creations'. Following a brief outline of relevant case groups and markets, we look at existing copyright law in the European Union, with particular regard to German law, compared to selected doctrines and recent developments in the U. S., U. K., China and Japan. In our view, copyright's fundamental principles and concepts will not need major changes. Copyright as it stands will be able to deal with the new challenges posed by AI, in particular regarding the eligibility for protection of AI-human 'collaborative' subject matter. To this end, we develop specific case groups as a first step toward establishing practically viable and applicable standards for the necessary assessment of AI-human 'mixed' subject-matter in individual cases.