Continually evolving technologies: does South African copyright law adequately protect AI generated works?

Mokotedi, Relebohile

Continually evolving technologies: does South African copyright law adequately protect AI generated works?

Thesis / Dissertation

2025

Abstract

In the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the breakthrough of increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has marked a change in the way in which creative outputs which would ordinarily be categorised as works eligible for copyright under international and domestic copyright legislation, are created. This unprecedented technological advancement in the ability of AI systems to generate creative outputs has sparked controversy within copyright law because of traditional anthropocentric views of copyright protected works, resulting in a need to develop legislation to keep up with these growing trends and shifts in ways that creative outputs are being generated. This dissertation aims to explore the protectability of AI-generated content in South Africa within the context of copyright. This will be done by outlining the justification theories of intellectual property law and aligning them with the general purpose of copyright. This is done in order to provide context on which theory/theories specifically informs the South African context. The protectability of copyrightable material will also involve a discussion into who created the work and this is why the concepts of authorship and originality will be discussed. The originality and authorship of the works will be imperative in establishing the ownership implications for these resultant works. Next, the positions of foreign jurisdictions will also be drawn on in order to assess how these countries have dealt with the intersection of AI into the space of copyright law. Ultimately, it will be shown that these works are worthy of copyright protection, and should not fall to the public domain. The argument will highlight that the AI-generated works should be protected by extending authorship to the human(s) responsible for the machine's composition. In this way, the authorship and ownership will lie, not with the AI, but with a natural or juristic person. The conclusion will, therefore, highlight a need for South Africa to develop its copyright legislation in order to keep up with the everchanging and developing technological trends

Keywords

Law

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Masters

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