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Yiheng Lu

Yiheng

PhD Student

Email: yiheng.lu@qmul.ac.uk

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Thesis title

Moral Rights in relation to Artificial Intelligence Creations

Supervisors

Summary of research

This research, under the guidance of Professor Johanna Gibson at Queen Mary University of London, delves into the uncharted territories of moral rights in the realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) creations. While economic rights of copyright in AI creations have been extensively debated, the discourse on AI moral rights remains largely unexplored. This study aims to scrutinise the prerequisites for AI to acquire moral rights, assess the feasibility of such rights, and propose a comprehensive regime for AI moral rights, adopting a doctrinal methodology to analyse pertinent academic perspectives, regulations, and cases.

The research is grounded in the assertion that the protection of AI moral rights is paramount and cannot be overshadowed by economic rights, as the exploitation of economic rights often intertwines with the author's moral interests. The study will explore the authorship qualification of AI and the originality of AI creations, focusing on AI systems based on neural network technology, capable of creating without human intervention through deep learning of human-supplied content.

The absence of legal protection for AI moral rights may lead to institutional shortcomings in the copyright protection of AI creations, potentially resulting in a significant disruption to the creative market and a plethora of AI creations with unknown authorship being placed in the public domain. This research contends that a thorough investigation into the protectability of AI moral rights is imperative and will propose a moral rights regime that aligns with the pertinent characteristics of AI creations.

By addressing the aforementioned research questions, this study aspires to propose practical and operative institutional recommendations to bridge the research gap in the academic community on AI moral rights, thereby contributing to the enrichment of the copyright theory of AI creations. The expected outcomes of this research are to provide insightful reflections and innovative solutions to the contemporary challenges posed by AI moral rights in the evolving landscape of intellectual property law.

Biography

Yiheng Lu is a doctoral researcher at Queen Mary University of London, focusing on Intellectual Property Law, specifically on Moral Rights in relation to Artificial Intelligence Creations, under the supervision of Professor Johanna Gibson.

Yiheng obtained his Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering and Automation and a second Bachelor Degree in Law with a focus on Intellectual Property Law from Nanjing Normal University, China. He then earned an LLM in Intellectual Property Law from The University of Manchester, UK, and an MSc in Power Systems Engineering from University College London, UK.

Currently, at Queen Mary University of London, Yiheng is conducting research in the interdisciplinary fields of Artificial Intelligence Engineering and Intellectual Property Law. His work aims to address the questions and challenges related to moral rights in AI creations.

Research

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