Turning an AI image into reality, does that infringe in China?

On 27^th November 2023, the Beijing Internet Court upheld that an AI generated work can be protected by copyright if the work reflects an author’s choice of expression and has originality (see our earlier blog post here). Almost a year later, on 18^th October 2024, we now have another decision from the Changshu People’s Court of Jiangsu Province, confirming again that an AI generated work is protectable by copyright, but denying infringement by a conceptually similar 3-dimensional work.

In this case, the plaintiff used an AI software and carefully selected the prompts to create a picture of a half-heart shaped red balloon floating on a river, which together with the reflection from the water’s surface formed a complete heart, accompanied by certain cityscape buildings in the background (see figure 1 below). The defendant, in the business of inflatable products, published a promotional picture (see figure 2 below) that is substantially similar to the plaintiff’s AI-generated image. The defendant also manufactured an actual half-heart shaped red balloon and placed it on a lake in Changshu city.

The Court found that the floating half-heart picture created by the plaintiff (figure 1) is a copyright protectable work, representing the plaintiff’s selection of various elements which in combination express the plaintiff’s original idea. However, copyright can protect only the work generated by the author, but not the idea behind it. Therefore, while the defendant’s own promotional picture (figure 2) itself infringed the plaintiff’s copyright, the 3-dimensional half-heart shaped balloon made in real life by the defendant did not infringe. The Court went further to comment that a half-heart shaped balloon per se would lack sufficient originality to afford copyright protection.

This is yet another topical AI-related copyright case handed down by the PRC Courts in this new era of AI and machine learning (please see here and here for our previous blog posts), again showing that the established principles of copyright, including that copyright protects the expressions of ideas, but not ideas themselves, still equally apply despite the advancements of the technology.