Exploring the Copyright Attribution of Artificial Intelligence

Generated Objects

Jingjing Zhang

Law School, Jilin University, Jilin, China

Keywords: Copyright, Artificial Intelligence, Ownership.

Abstract: Regarding the attribution of copyright in AI-generated products, the first thing to consider is whether there is

an agreement between the parties, and according to the principle of autonomy of meaning, if there is an

agreement between the parties, the content of the agreement should be respected. However, in practice, most

of the disputes arising from the parties do not exist in the case of agreement, if you want to determine the

ultimate ownership of the copyright in this case, the interests of all parties should be taken into account, this

paper believes that the artificial intelligence generated by the copyright belongs to the user is the most

appropriate.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, with the rapid development of

artificial intelligence technology, the emergence of a

large number of artificial intelligence generation, not

only widely seen in the field of science and

technology, in the field of literature is also increasing,

which led to a large number of issues related to

the artificial intelligence generation in the academic

community is more caused by a wide range of

discussions. At present, for the case of agreement,

academics generally believe that can be dealt with in

accordance with the agreement, this kind of situation

on the attribution of copyright is not controversial, the

controversy mainly focuses on the case of no

agreement. On the attribution of copyright of artificial

intelligence generation without agreement, scholars

hold different views and have not yet formed a unified

conclusion. There are views that based on the subject

status of AI itself regarding the AI products, the

the AI itself; there are also views that based on the

close connection between the user and the AI

products, the copyright should be attributed to the

user; there are also views that based on the research

and development of the designer and developer for

the overall research and development of the AI, the

developer; and another view is that, based on the large

amount of financial support from investors, it is more

reasonable to attribute the copyright to the investors.

Judicially, in Shenzhen city, Guangdong province,

Nanshan district People's court trial of tencent v.

Yingxun technology infringement of copyright

disputes, the plaintiff tencent company first published

on its website titled “lunch review: shanghai index

rose slightly 0.11% at 2671.93 points communication

operation, oil mining and other plates led the rise of”

the financial articles, the end of the note “this article

is by tencent robotic Dreamwriter automatic

writing ” , Yingxun technology in the premise

without its permission on its website to publish the

same article, and did not mark the source of the article

and signature, therefore, the plaintiff Tencent v.

Defendant Yingxun infringement of its copyright and

the right to disseminate information network, and

constitute unfair competition. The focus of the

dispute in this case is whether artificial intelligence

can have independent legal personality and establish

civil subject qualification in private law. For a period

of time, the basic view of the court is that the

qualification of artificial intelligence as a legal

subject is to be clearly stipulated by law, but the

relevant content automatically generated by artificial

intelligence needs to be protected. However, in this

case, there are new signs of development, the court

found that the article in question belongs to the

written works protected by China's copyright law, and

it is a legal person's work created under the auspices

308

Zhang, J.

Exploring the Copyright Attribution of Artiﬁcial Intelligence Generated Objects.

DOI: 10.5220/0014373700004859

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science (ICPLSS 2025), pages 308-313

ISBN: 978-989-758-785-6

of the plaintiff. It means that the court explicitly

recognized that the articles generated by AI constitute

works, which also clarifies the legal subject

qualification of AI.

In the case of Li Mou v. Liu Mou infringement of

the right of authorship of works and the right of

dissemination of information network disputes heard

by the Beijing Internet Court, the plaintiff used open

source software to generate the picture in question

through a series of operations and then released it on

the Internet platform, the defendant released an article

on Baike and used the picture in question as an

accompanying picture without the permission of the

plaintiff, and cut off the plaintiff's watermark of

authorship on the Internet platform, and it was sued

for infringing upon the right of authorship and the

right of dissemination of information network

enjoyed by the plaintiff. The plaintiff was sued for

violating the plaintiff's right of authorship and the

right of information network dissemination. The

focus of the case was whether the plaintiff should

enjoy the copyright of the picture. The Court, in

accordance with the relevant provisions of the

natural persons, legal persons or unincorporated

organizations, and therefore artificial intelligence

itself cannot be an author in the sense of the Copyright

Law. The plaintiff was the one who formed the

pictures according to the needs through a series of

operations and settings, and the pictures were directly

generated based on the plaintiff's intellectual input

and reflected the plaintiff's personalized expression,

so the plaintiff was the author of the pictures and

enjoyed the copyright of the pictures. In this case, the

court found that the copyright belongs to the user of

artificial intelligence, denied the legal subject

qualification of artificial intelligence, and the court of

Nanshan district of Shenzhen city in the case of the

subject qualification of artificial intelligence to be

confirmed by the judicial decision path is very

different.

This shows that at present, the subject of copyright

attribution is still unclear. This paper examines the

question of which subject the copyright of AI

generated objects should be attributed to, which is of

great significance for solving the long-standing

disputes over the ownership of AI generated objects

and promoting the long-term development of AI. In

particular, the main problem to be solved in this paper

is the attribution of the copyright of AI generators, so

the question of whether the AI generators themselves

belong to works will not be discussed in this paper.

2 THE POSSIBILITY OF

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

2.1 Attribution of Legal Personality to

the AI Itself

At present, there is still a big controversy in the

academic circles about whether artificial intelligence

itself can become the author in the sense of copyright

law, and there is no clear provision in the law, in this

regard, there are three influential views in the

academic circles: subjectivism, objectivism and

relative neutrality.

Subjectivist scholars believe that artificial

intelligence does not satisfy the subjective elements

of the copyright law on the work, can not yet become

the author, should not enjoy copyright. Subjectivism

insists on taking the author as the center, and believes

that the legislative purpose of copyright is to

stimulate the creative enthusiasm of human beings,

while artificial intelligence cannot embody the will of

human beings, let alone be stimulated by the

recognize artificial intelligence as the

author(Yang,2024).

Objectivist scholars believe that if artificial

intelligence cannot become an author in the sense of

can become authors, it is too biased and very one-

sided. For whether artificial intelligence can become

a work, the most central element of judgment should

be whether it has originality, that is, should adhere to

the result-centered, in the artificial intelligence

generation does meet the premise of originality, not

only should agree that it belongs to the work, but also

should be recognized as the author of the artificial

intelligence generation of authorship status,

recognition of its enjoyment of

Scholars with a neutral attitude towards this issue

believe that, although from the viewpoint of the type

of object performance, AI-generated works include

contents generated entirely by AI, but human

participation and intervention still cannot be avoided

in the process of design and R&D, and AI does not

yet have an autonomous consciousness, and cannot

generate “works” in the sense of the copyright

law completely independently(Tang and Niu,2023).

However, even if the artificial intelligence can not

become the author at present, along with the

development of artificial intelligence technology,

there still exists the possibility of giving the artificial

Exploring the Copyright Attribution of Artiﬁcial Intelligence Generated Objects

309

intelligence a mimetic personality or even a legal

personality, which in turn has the possibility of taking

the artificial intelligence as the copyright owner of its

generative works(Zhuang and Xin,2024).

2.2 Attributable to the User

In the case of Li Mou v. Liu Mou in the dispute over

infringement of the right of authorship of works and

the right of dissemination of information network,

which was heard by the Beijing Internet Court, the

court recognized that the user owns the copyright of

the works generated by the use of open-source

software, which shows that it is also operative to

attribute the copyright of the AI generation to the user

in practice.

The reasons for attributing the copyright of AI-

generated works to users are mainly based on the

following three considerations:

First of all, the user itself has strong control over

the AI-generated object. The user sends instructions

to the artificial intelligence, sets up the operation

process and constantly modifies and improves it, and

finally produces the artificial intelligence generator,

the user's own familiarity with the generator has long

exceeded that of other subjects, and assigning the

re-creating and re-producing, which is conducive to

the further development and improvement of the

artificial intelligence generator.

Secondly, granting copyright to the user is

conducive to recognizing the subject of responsibility

when the artificial intelligence generates

infringement. “Who uses, who is responsible for”,

the user has experienced the whole process of

creating artificial intelligence products, very

understand and know the artificial intelligence in

generating a series of information and factors used in

the work, and clear all the instructions and

requirements received by the artificial intelligence,

once the artificial intelligence products subsequent

infringement, the user as an In the event of

subsequent infringement of artificial intelligence, the

user, as the owner of the copyright of the artificial

intelligence and the witness of the artificial

intelligence in the whole process of generation, shall

participate in the litigation and bear the burden of

proof and defense, which is more operable.

Finally, the user's ownership of the copyright of

the AI generation is conducive to the promotion of the

personalized development of AI and the future

development of AI. The user's own use behavior

belongs to the further development of artificial

intelligence, when the user owns the copyright of the

generator, it has the spiritual power and economic

basis to improve the generator, in order to obtain

higher profits and create higher value, the user will

spare no effort to improve the generator of artificial

intelligence, and make the expression of the generator

of artificial intelligence more enriched and emotional,

which not only contributes to the further

improvement and development of artificial

intelligence, but also helps to promote further

coordination and integration of human beings and

artificial intelligence, and enhances the future

development of artificial intelligence in the face of

human beings. This is not only conducive to the

further improvement and development of AI

generators, but also conducive to promoting the

further coordination and integration of human beings

and AI, and enhancing the ability of human beings to

use new cultures and new technologies(Zhang,2025).

2.3 Attributable to the Design

Developer

The designers and developers of AI products belong

to the main body that designs and develops the

underlying logic and overall framework of AI at the

source stage, without the designers and developers of

AI products, there will be no subsequent AI products,

therefore, the designers and developers should be

taken into consideration when judging the copyright

attribution of AI products(Xu,2023).

However, at the same time, there exists a certain

boundary between the AI-based design developer

itself and the AI-generated object, and the design

developer is not necessarily the closest and most

direct creative subject of the generated object.

Therefore, when judging whether the designer-

developer can own the copyright of the AI-generated

object or not, the degree of the association between

the design developer and the generated object as well

as its substantial contribution to the process of the

creation of the generated object should be also taken

into consideration(Tang and Niu,2023). If the

designers and developers have a close practical

connection with the AI generated works, it is not

improper to attribute the copyright of AI generated

works to the designers and developers, which is more

conducive to incentivize the designers and developers

to research and develop new AI software and promote

the future development of AI.

2.4 Attributable to Investors

At present, the development of artificial intelligence

is still in the stage of weak artificial intelligence, for

ICPLSS 2025 - International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science

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the issue of copyright attribution of AI generated

objects, it should not only conform to the general

principle stipulated in the copyright law, i.e., it should

be attributed to the authors, but also give full play to

the incentive efficacy of the copyright law.

Attributing the copyright of AI generated works to

investors is, on the one hand, based on interest-driven

consideration, when investors enjoy the economic

benefits brought by AI, they will naturally increase

their investment in AI, thus further promoting the

improvement and development of AI, and facilitating

the advancement of weak AI to strong AI; on the other

hand, it is based on the consideration that the rapid

development of AI in recent years cannot be

separated from the financial support and material

maintenance of investors, and if there is no substantial

investment from investors, AI cannot be developed to

today's level, and from this point of view, there does

exist a substantial connection between investors and

AI generated works, and copyrights should be

attributed to the investors(Tang and Niu,2023).

3 IDEAS FOR COPYRIGHT

ATTRIBUTION IN ARTIFICIAL

INTELLIGENCE

3.1 Attribution of Legal Personality to

the AI itself

If the artificial intelligence itself wants to own the

must have a legal personality, natural person

personality or the legal anthropomorphic personality

can be. However, based on the current level of

development of artificial intelligence, this article

believes that the artificial intelligence generates the

itself is not operable.

The current artificial intelligence can not have

legal personality, in essence, is still a human tool, not

only the research and development design needs to

rely on human intellectual achievements, itself does

not have innovation, its application and operation in

practice also need to rely on human instruction and

operation, can not run independently. At the same

time, artificial intelligence does not have the right

ability, behavioral ability, and can not independently

assume civil liability. In the current legal framework,

the subject with legal personality, such as companies,

enterprises, are composed of natural persons, with the

ability to exercise the rights, obligations, and fulfill

the legal responsibility, and as mentioned above, the

current artificial intelligence can not satisfy the above

conditions, therefore, the artificial intelligence does

not have legal personality.

In conclusion, the copyright of the AI-generated

objects cannot be attributed to the current AI.

3.2 Attributable to the User

Regarding whether the copyright of AI-generated

content can be attributed to the user, there are two

opposing viewpoints in the academic community.

Scholars who deny the attribution of copyright to the

user believe that the user does not embody originality

in the process of using AI, and that although it

participates in the process of generating the AI-

generated content, it is not in compliance with the

definition of creation in the Copyright

Law(Wang,2020).

Scholars with a positive attitude believe that,

although artificial intelligence is generated by

investors' investment, research and development

designers' research and development design, but

implemented into the specific artificial intelligence

generation, it is generated by the user to create

artificial intelligence generation, and the user plays a

decisive role in the final generation(Yang,2024).

This article believes that the copyright of artificial

intelligence products should be attributed to the user

for two reasons:

First, the specific form and content of artificial

intelligence products are ultimately decided by the

user, fully reflecting the user's attitude, emotion and

will, compared with investors and R & D designers,

the user put more labor into the specific products,

embodied in the creativity is stronger, the user enjoys

the copyright is more consistent with the legal theory.

In the process of creation of artificial intelligence

products, the user constantly optimize the

instructions, improve the operation, and finally form

the expected products, therefore, the copyright

attributed to the user is consistent with the author-

centrism.

Secondly, from the perspective of incentives, the

closest contact with artificial intelligence generator is

the user, the user is the most direct controller and

disseminator of the generator, if the copyright is

attributed to the user, it will be conducive to further

stimulate the user's enthusiasm for creativity, and

promote the further improvement and development of

artificial intelligence generator in the process of

operation and output, which is very beneficial to the

sustainable development of artificial intelligence.

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311

3.3 Attributable to the Design

Developer

The emergence and rapid development of artificial

intelligence cannot be separated from the research

and development and design of the designers and

developers, so it seems to be very reasonable for them

to enjoy the copyright. However, there are two

serious problems with this attribution logic.

First, the rapid development of artificial

intelligence, a large number of technical support and

repeated algorithmic deduction is the cornerstone,

and these basic complicated work, only one or two

people can not be completed, then there will be a

and is not conducive to the ultimate solution to the

Secondly, the designers and developers are

developing the artificial intelligence itself, which is a

kind of macro-basic technology, the correlation

between the developers and the artificial intelligence

is needless to say, but the correlation between the

developers and the products of the artificial

intelligence does not seem to be as close as the

correlation between the products and the users, and it

is not in line with the requirements of the subject of

the work in the copyright law if the copyright of the

products of the artificial intelligence is attributed to

the designers and developers.

3.4 Attributable to Investors

In the development process of artificial intelligence,

capital is often the most critical and fundamental

factors, if there is no financial support, even if more

design developers and users can not promote the rapid

development of artificial intelligence, therefore, in

judging the attribution of the copyright of artificial

intelligence products should also take into account the

interests of investors.

However, this does not mean that it is necessary to

protect the interests of investors by attributing

in which investors do not have ownership rights but

still obtain considerable profits. In the field of

artificial intelligence, if you want to legally protect

the interests of investors, you can do so by dividing

the proceeds of the artificial intelligence itself

between them and the designers and developers,

without having to consider the issue of investors'

copyrights at the stage of generating objects.

This is not only conducive to promote investors to

continue to invest in artificial intelligence research

and development enterprises or scientific research

team of funds and resources, for the future of artificial

intelligence to lay the foundation for the long-term

development and update iteration,but also more

conducive to the protection of investors' own

interests, practice the principle of investment

protectionism, play the role of copyright incentives to

balance the interests of all parties at the same time to

promote the prosperity of the socio-economic,

scientific and technological cultural progress.

In conclusion, this article believes that based on

the current level of development of artificial

intelligence and the comprehensive consideration of

the interests of all parties, the copyright of artificial

intelligence generation is attributed to the user is

more reasonable.

4 CONCLUSION

This article focuses on the issue of copyright

attribution of AI-generated products in the current

level and stage of development, and analyzes and

explores the possibilities and attribution ideas of

AI itself, users, designers, developers, and investors

one by one, starting from the existing judicial

decisions.

According to the current development of artificial

intelligence and considering its future prospects, this

article believes that it is more appropriate to attribute

the copyright to the users, and the artificial

intelligence itself cannot become the author in the

sense of copyright law because it does not have legal

personality; the designers and developers are closely

related to the artificial intelligence, but the connection

with the artificial intelligence products is weaker than

the products and users; investors, although they

invested a lot of money in the process of the

development of artificial intelligence, but they are not

as interested in the products as the users. There are

more efficient and reasonable ways to protect their

rights and interests in practice than attributing the

At the same time, attributing the copyright of AI

products to users is not only in line with author-

centrism, but also can play the role of encouraging

users, which is conducive to promoting the long-term

development of AI products in practice.

With the continuous development and

improvement of artificial intelligence, there are many

kinds of artificial intelligence generated products, in

the future, the copyright of artificial intelligence

generated products may be attributed to more

subjects. However, no matter how the technology

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develops, the issue of copyright attribution should

always be handled in a prudent manner, and the

interests of all parties should be taken into account, so

as to provide a solid legal basis and guarantee for the

development of artificial intelligence technology.

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