The Use of Copyrighted Works by AI Systems: Art Works in the Data Mill

We shall first introduce the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in producing new intellectual creations, distinguishing approaches based on knowledge representation and on machine learning. Then we shall provide an overview of some significant applications of AI to the production of intellectual creations, distinguishing the extent to which they depend on pre-existing works, and the different ways in which such pre-existing works are used in the creative process. In addition, we shall discuss some methods to automatically assess the similarity of works and styles, in the context of AI technologies for text generation. Finally, we shall discuss the legal aspects of AI-reuse of copyrighted works, focusing on the rights of the authors of such works relative to the process and the outputs of AI.