Summary

A bill to regulate artificial intelligence through copyright has been proposed in the French Parliament with the aim of protecting authors and artists of creative works in the face of rapidly advancing AI. The bill aims for a stricter control of works generated by AI-systems to allow for an easier collection of compensation for their use, while also encouraging innovation and artistic creation.

Firstly, the proposed bill states that the integration of copyright-protected intellectual works into an AI-system and their exploitation is governed by the general provisions of the French Intellectual Property Code, and is therefore subject to the authorization of the authors or rightsholders. Secondly, for works created by an AI-system without any direct human intervention the only rightsholders of those works would be the authors or rightsholders who authorized the creation of those AI-generated works. Authors’ societies and collective management organizations can perform collective management of these rights. Thirdly, works generated by AI-systems must be labelled as “AI generated works” and the names of the authors who made the work possible must be mentioned. Finally, in the event that the AI-generated works are created from works whose origin cannot be determined, a levy system aimed to promote creativity is established for the benefit of the relevant collective management organization. The levy will be imposed on the company that used the AI system to generate the “artificial work”.