The question is no longer whether artificial intelligence can make things people recognise as creative; it is who, if anyone, owns what the machine produces. That shift is now forcing intellectual property law to confront problems it was not built to handle, according to comments by Prof. Zhivko Draganov of the University of National and World Economy at a seminar marking 20 years of practice by intellectual property lawyer Yordan Politov.

For decades, authorship was treated as a distinctly human domain. AI has begun to erode that assumption by producing science fiction, poetry, visual art and industrial designs that can look indistinguishable from human-made work. According to the article in Capital, examples are already being discussed in Japan and China, where works involving AI have received awards, while platforms such as Midjourney have entered competitions for young talent and stirred arguments over what creativity actually means. In music, too, there are reports of virtual performers in Japan drawing large audiences with songs generated entirely by algorithms.

The sharpest legal test has come through the Artificial Inventor Project, better known as DABUS, in which patent applications were filed naming an AI system itself as the inventor. Patent offices in Europe and the United States rejected the filings on the basis that an inventor must be a natural person, but South Africa took a different path and became the first country to recognise a patent listing AI as the inventor. Reporting on that decision, the World Economic Forum noted that the South African case involved a food-container invention and highlighted the wider debate it triggered over the future of patent law.

That split in international practice suggests the law is moving unevenly, but in a direction that could ultimately force a rethink of core principles. As Capital reported, the issue is already extending beyond patents into industrial design and branding, with tools such as PromeAI, ImagineArt and Looka being used to generate designs and trade mark ideas. For Prof. Draganov, the practical implication is clear: AI is no longer merely a tool in the creative process, but a force challenging the very definition of authorship.

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Source: Noah Wire Services