The Yuan Global Talks on Generative AI and Human Creativity

Sponsor: BCLT

After decades of bust and boom, the year 2023 witnessed a meteoric rise of Generative AI (“Gen-AI”). Distinct from its predecessor Analytical AI, Gen-AI’s capability to produce ostensibly creative content, including aesthetically appealing “art” pieces with human prompts and innovative technical solutions to well-defined problems, heralds a paradigm shift in human being’s creative process. As manifested by the recent cases globally, this paradigm shift starts to pose real-world challenges to the good old IP system that aims to incentivize and honor human creativity. Among the various doctrinal challenges, two stand out at the moment as particularly pressing: (1) should IP protect the outputs of such human + AI (“Centaur”) creative synergies, and (2) can proprietary data be “fair used” to train Gen-AI? In the long term, how IP system addresses these challenges may have profound implications on the evolution of the Gen-AI ecosystem, and more importantly, the future of human creativity. Finding the proper answers however, requires a perspective that spans beyond the confines of IP doctrines alone – it demands solid understanding of the rapidly evolving value chain and commercialization landscape, core regulatory principles in harmony with a human-centered approach, the concrete mechanisms IP system uses to facilitate diversity and equity in creation, as well as a philosophical contemplation on what human creativity means in the dawning “age of Gen-AI”.

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