Originality and the Future of Copyright in an Age of Generative AI

Abstract

This paper takes the occasion of French DJ David Guetta’s use of generative AI tools to create lyrics and a voice in the style of Eminem, which he then used in one of his concerts, as the basis for an exploration of the shifting meaning of creativity and originality in a digital age.

The paper seeks to identify more precisely what is distinctive in emerging models of AI-driven creativity and asks whether copyright can accommodate such new cultural forms and practices. Our main contention is that the Guetta form of creativity differs in certain important respects from what has come before.

More specifically, the paper outlines an iterative, dynamic process of conception, prompting, generation, filtering, and deployment to characterise creativity in this context. Nevertheless, we contend that copyright – specifically the concept of originality as articulated in US federal law – is a sufficiently durable legal form that can manage these differences, and the two basic requirements of modern copyright law (a tangible medium of expression and a modest degree of creativity) remain relevant in identifying the scope of legal protection.

The paper concludes with the thought that the David Guetta story reveals something more general about creativity in a digital age, namely that while hybrid-networked (i.e., human – corporate – machine) creators have always created hybrid-networked cultural forms (i.e., creations that blend human and technology-constituted elements), such hybridity becomes increasingly visible and complex in the context of a world of generative AI.

Earlier – and influential – models of creativity as human-driven and involving creation ex nihilo become harder to sustain in a new age of generative AI but that does not mean copyright or notions of originality are redundant or copyright is unable to accommodate the Guetta and other similar cases.

Keywords: AI, generative AI, copyright, creativity, originality, artificial intelligence, data, machine learning, ML, Feist, originality, David Guetta, ChatGPT, Dall-e 2

JEL Classification: K0, K1, K10, K19, K20, K21, K23, K29