Curious case of works by artificial intelligence

While computer generated artwork has been attempted since 1970’s, only in the recent past, the level of creativity demonstrated by AI has started nearing human creativity and examples of these are in front of us. In 2016 a short novel written by a Japanese AI reached the second round of a national literary prize and the AI created by the company Deep Mind has been composing music. Many will argue that such works created by AI lack originality required under Copyright Law as AI works are based on datasets which are fed to it. For example, if an AI has to create a musical composition, it first needs to listen to a lot of existing musical compositions and through reinforcement learning, the algorithms of the AI learns the patterns which it then uses to create a new musical composition. While AI may be mimicking the style of a particular composer by analysing the music created by such a composer, it is not recreating or using the musical compositions created by such composer in the past. Also, AI can analyse music created by various composers and develop a different combined style as well. What an AI is at present not capable of doing is to develop an original style which is not a combination of styles of different composers available as part of datasets to the AI. Would that mean that the musical compositions created by an AI is not original? There are various human composers who also emulate the style of famous composers and create music. If they can enjoy the fruits of Copyright, why can’t an AI created work also receive the same amount of protection when it demonstrates similar levels of creativity?

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