Ultrainfringing By Shubha Ghosh, Crandall Melvin Professor of Law & Director, SIPLI & TCLP A civil judgment of an Internet Court in Guangzhou has received global attention reaching beyond the borders of China’s fifth most populous city. At issue were images generated by Tab, an image generating website, propagated by a company, whose name is anonymized in the court’s opinion. A copyright licensing association in Shanghai brought a copyright suit based on allegedly infringing images of the animated character Ultraman generated by Tab. For those unfamiliar with Ultraman, the opinion contains images of copyrighted Ultraman as well as AI generated images found infringing by the court. A bilingual version of the opinion (in Mandarin and English) is also available (complete with legal analysis and pictures). The court found the images infringing the reproduction and adaptation rights. While the court awarded compensatory damages to the licensing company, it also ordered the company to introduce filters to block the use of Ultraman images to produce infringing works. However, the court declined the removal of copyrighted Ultraman images from the test data used by Tab. Filtering as a remedy raises challenging questions of what technological requirements a court can impose on a company in a copyright suit. Courts in the United States have grappled with the use of filters by companies like YouTube. The challenging question is how much filtering is required and what triggers a duty to filter. The Guangzhou acknowledges these issues and signals the ongoing litigation they invite. Ultraman, known for defeating demons threatening innocent populations, is now at the heart of the legal debates over AI. The superhero has earned an initial victory but has also unleashed more potential villains for copyright law to confront. Perhaps one hint of where the disputes will trend is provided by the Guangzhou’s pronouncements about AI: this court emphasizes that AI is a strategic technology that will lead to future advancement. It is the core driving force for a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, and it is considered to be the main force in generating new quality productive forces. Our nation has undergone rapid development in AI technology. Data and computational resources have become increasingly rich, and new technological developments have become widely applicable. This has set a solid foundation for broadening the scope of AI scenarios. Since the generative AI industry is still at its early stage of development, it is unwise to overburden service providers with duties. In the process of rapid technological development, service providers should actively take reasonable, affordable precautions, thereby promoting the Chinese-style AI regulatory system that is safe and developing, balanced and inclusive, and innovative and protective Such an approach to innovation may bear truth for global intellectual property standards. | 