AGENDA

Emerging IP Issues arising from the Explosion in AI Applications

When we last considered AI at Patski (Whistler, 2020), the focus was largely on drafting specifications and claims for AI technologies, which included AI architectures, AI training and AI inference to assist human endeavour in a variety of contexts. Since the latter part of 2022 and the unleashing of ChatGPT on the world, the popular focus of AI applications has been to replace humans across the spectrum of human intellectual activities, including as creators, writers, musical composers, actors, professional workers, artists, scam artists, etc.  Large language model AI has arguably long ago reached the point where it passes the Turing Test and is indistinguishable from human intellect. Some suggest that the creators of complex AI applications can no longer predict how their applications will behave, and claim some AI applications exhibit emotional traits such as love and jealousy, like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In addition to the patentability of AI applications, a myriad of other IP issues are arising in the context of modern IP practice. IP issues such as inventorship and authorship have always been present with AI-generated inventions and works, but have become more complex where the AI applications can create works, business plans or inventions with little human input. Other IP issues extend to ownership of IP in creations of AI applications trained on third party data, infringement of copyright in underlying data on which AI applications are trained, and counterfeiting of products and images forming part of the AI activities. AI also raises ethical issues in relation to AI-produced or AI-manipulated works, such as fake news, legal opinions, academic treatises, answers to online testing on behalf of humans, and deceptive voice and image manipulation and the like. Still further, AI is extending into the practice activities of modern patent attorneys at least in the field of patent searching, but possibly in other practice activities?

To explore some of these important issues, the theme of Patski 2024, Italy will be: “Emerging IP Issues arising from the Explosion in AI Applications”.