Editorial: The Future of IP Law in an Age of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

(2016) 13:3 SCRIPTed 284 In October 2015, AlphaGo became the first Computer program to beat a professional human Go player, the reigning European champion Fan Hui. Five month later, watched by an audience of over 60 million people worldwide, it was going to beat 18-time world champion and 9 Dan player Lee Sedol, finally catapulting AI into the public limelight and finally turning, for many, Science Fiction into Science. In between these two dates, and admittedly to a somewhat smaller audience, CREATe, the RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy, 1 held what was by then already the fourth incarnation of its " Artificial Intelligence and IP law " workshop series, AIIP IV, as in previous years in conjunction with the annual Jurix conference. CREATe has addressed the future of copyright law in an age of AI since its launch in 2012 in two of its work packages, reflecting the different ways in which AI has an impact on copyright law. Artificial Intelligence (AI) impacts on copyright and other IP law in two ways. First, human creators are increasingly assisted by intelligent technology, co-creating works with (partially) autonomous machines, or in some cases leaving the creative process entirely to software programs. Just as the participants of AIIP were gathering in Braga, in London, rehearsals began of the first musical conceived, composed and scripted largely by AI, Beyond the Fence.