Federal Court takes on new AI copyright case [Video]

The Federal Court of Canada is being asked to declare that only humans — and not artificial intelligence — can be considered authors under Canada’s copyright law.

It’s the first court case in the country testing how the Copyright Act treats artificially generated content, like the text, images and videos created by systems such as ChatGPT.

David Fewer, director and general counsel at the University of Ottawa’s Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, says one of the aims of the clinic’s application is to lay “down in bedrock” that only humans are authors under the law.

The time to do that is now, given the volume of AI-generated content that’s being produced, Fewer said.

AI and copyright are at an inflection point, and we’re at the start of a wave of content “being put before our eyes that was generated by an AI and not by a human,” …