AI and copyright: a dialogue between Chinese and European scholars

Scuola Sant'Anna, with the collaboration of the Confucius Institute, is organizing the expert workshop “AI and copyright: a dialogue between Chinese and European scholars” on April 30,2025, starting at 9 a.m. (Aula Magna Storica, Main Campus).

Abstract

Since the advent of Generative AI, the challenges raised by artificial intelligence to copyright law and enforcement have made the headlines. However, since the onset of AI technologies, it has become immediately apparent how copyright protected work are involved both in the input phase, when they are used as data for AI training, and in the output phase, when AI-generated products may constitute derivative works or copies of pre-existing creations.

Legal systems are reacting in a diverging and not coordinated manner to such revolutionary changes. The EU introduced in 2019 two exceptions for text-and-data mining, and with the AI Act (2024) it has imposed copyright compliance obligations on providers of general-purpose AI models. In China even though copyright law has not been revised to react the AI age, there are already three cases that confirm the copyrightability of AI-generated content, and two cases about the liability of the service providers of AI models and content-generating platforms.

Against the background of these convergences and divergences, this Expert Workshop brings together renowned EU and Chinese experts in the field of copyright and AI to comment on the current state of the art, address its shortcomings, and discuss avenues for cooperation and reform.