How Copyright Responds To AI-Generated Images

1. Introduction: when PRC court encounters AIGC¹

On November 27, 2023, the Beijing Internet Court made a judicial ruling on a case regarding the AI-generated images (the "First AI-image Case").² This case is noted to be the first of its kind in China, involving a plaintiff surnamed Li and a defendant surnamed Liu. Li claimed that Liu used an image of a woman in her personal webpage without his permission in February 2023. Li mentioned that he had generated the image using Stable Diffusion, an open-source software and posted it on his own social media account at Xiaohongshu, a social media platform widely regarded as the Chinese version of Instagram.

Liu argued that she found the image by using a search engine and did not see any watermark or information about its copyright owner. She also said she was not using the image for commercial purposes. However, the Beijing Internet Court eventually ruled in favor of Li, pointing out that the image showed