Generative artificial intelligence ("AI") made a major
pop-culture splash earlier this year with the explosion of
Chat-GPT. The capabilities of these AI tools to generate content
such as text, images, music, and code, is now widely recognized and
many startup businesses are offering services powered by
third-party AI tools. However, there is significant uncertainty
surrounding intellectual property ("IP") in AI, generally
and in particular, for service providers who offer AI-related
services to their customers.
As is often the case with rapidly changing technology, the law
is lagging significantly behind AI when it comes to IP ownership
and rights over the outputs generated by AI tools. In Canada,
current IP laws do not explicitly address the question of whether
AI-generated outputs are eligible for IP protection, and if so, who
owns them. The existing legal framework is based on the assumption
that there is a human author or inventor behind every IP-protected
work
