The Shenzhen court ruled that a work created by artificial intelligence is subject to copyright protection. This decision was made as a result of a dispute between Tencent Corporation and an online platform owned by Shanghai Yingxun Technology.
The platform copied content generated by Dreamwriter without permission. Dreamwriter is an automatic news writing program developed by Tencent Corporation in 2015.
In August 2018, Dreamwriter wrote an article that was published on the Tencent Securities website with a note that this text was automatically generated by Dreamwriter. The article was later copied by Shanghai Yingxun Technology’s platform.
In its decision, the court noted that the form of expression of the article meets the requirements of a written work, the structure and logic of the article are reasonable and understandable, and the article has a certain degree of originality.
The Shenzhen District People’s Court ruled that Shanghai Yingxun Technology violated Tencent Corporation’s copyright by its actions and should bear civil liability. Considering that the defendant has already removed the disputed work from its website, Shanghai Yingxun Technology must pay compensation to Tencent Corporation for economic damages and rights protection.
Source: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/