Al Throws The Patent System Into Turmoil

Artificial intelligence is overturning the conventional idea of intellectual property rights, especially in drug discovery

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE or AI has been shaking up the established system of intellectual property rights (IPR) like nothing else, possibly since the time the British Parliament enacted the Statute of Monopolies in 1623. The modern patent system has taken its time to evolve, the milestone development being the first Patent Statute passed by the US Congress in 1790, which was followed a year later by France's patent system, created during the Revolution. However, the AI revolution has thrown into a flap both policymakers and judges who are struggling to understand the wider implications of the new technology on the modern patent system that was established more than a century ago.

The case that has grabbed attention is the suit filed in February this year by stock photography giant Getty Images in the US against London-based Stability AI, the startup that created open-source AI art generator Stable Diffusion. The photo company accused Stability AI of "brazen infringement of Getty Images' intellectual property on a staggering scale" by copying more than 12 million images from its database "without permission...or compensation...as part of its efforts to build a competing business". Getty charges Stability AI with infringing its copyright and trademark protections.

AI art tools require illustrations, artwork and photographs to use as training data, which are taken from the web, usually without the creator's consent. The startup, which describes itself as the world's leading open source generative AI firm, is also facing a class action suit by artists in the US. These artists have filed lawsuits against Stability AI and two other companies, alleging that their AI tools were "trained on billions of copyrighted images scraped from the internet" and contained in a dataset that was downloaded and used by the companies without compensation for or consent from the artists.