Generative AI & Intellectual Property Law: A Special Report

Generative artificial intelligence holds the promise of opening vast new vistas on human creativity, thus providing a wide array of new markets for rights owners.

But as the Variety Intelligence Platform special report “Gen AI & IP Law,” accessible to subscribers at the link below, explores in detail, there’s also the potential for chaos and disruption, as U.S. courts are fast discovering.

In recent months, controversies around generative AI have erupted in nearly all areas of intellectual property law, from copyright and patents to trademarks and publicity rights.

They have touched on both the use of protected works of IP for training generative AI models and whether the images, text and inventions they turn out can or should be protected as IP.

The legal questions these controversies raise are profound and far reaching:

ChatGPT, Midjourney and DALL-E are just a few of the increasingly popular AI tools raising these kind of questions. They are also pioneering a new form of content known as synthetic media, which recreates the likenesses of public figures including Hollywood talent in unauthorized, often unflattering depictions.

As this special report recounts, organizations from the Writers Guild of America to SAG-AFTRA are among those grappling with how the changes wrought by AI will impact legislation and contracts.

If you want to understand how the technology is impacting Hollywood more broadly, check out VIP+’s previous special report, “Generative AI & Entertainment.”

But to fully appreciate the legal dimensions of this phenomenon, industry professionals must first understand how this sophisticated and rapidly advancing technology has challenged the very market-based economic premise of intellectual property law, which is at the foundation of the entertainment business.