The New EU AI Act: A Comprehensive Legislation on AI or Just a Beginning?

Abstract

The paper examines whether the EU AI Act, once adopted, will represent a comprehensive piece of legislation with the focus on the intellectual property rights (IPR) legal framework. Several areas identified as being challenged by the application of AI are analyzed: ownership and authorship of works generated by the AI system or with the help of the AI system; protecting technology underlying an AI system with IP rights; protection of IP rights of third parties when training and operating an AI system (IP rights might be infringed by training an AI system on IP protected content, as well as while operating an AI system when AI systems generate content which infringes IP rights or where the AI system acts as an intermediary whose services are used to infringe IP rights) and the influence of the application of AI on the well-established legal standards. The paper will examin whether the AI Act addresses or might be used to help solving the outstanding issues in each area identified.