Chinese Court Rules That AI Image Has Copyright Protection
A court in eastern China has ruled that an AI-generated image is eligible for copyright protection. The ruling from Jiangsu province is the second such decision from mainland China where an AI-generated picture has been afforded protection.
The case revolves around an image created by Midjourney, a popular AI picture generator. The plaintiff with the surname Lin generated an image featuring a heart-shaped balloon. Lin later discovered that two companies had used the design in their social media posts without permission and subsequently filed a lawsuit.
The Changshu People’s Court ordered the defendants to issue a public apology and pay 10,000 yuan (approximately $1,380) in damages, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.
This ruling follows a similar decision by the Beijing Internet Court in 2024. The court ruled that an AI-generated image of a young Asian woman, created using Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion, qualified for copyright protection due to the human creator’s intellectual contribution. This decision came after a blogger lifted the images and removed the complainant’s watermark.
In both cases, the plaintiff’s intellectual contributions and aesthetic choices were cited by the courts in their decisions.
Hu Yue, deputy chief judge of the Changshu People’s Court, says that the case underlines that AI-generated images can be afforded copyright protections so long as human creativity went into the making of a work.
“This case further enriches and refines legal practice and theory related to AI,” Yue says, per South China Morning Post’s report.
“It provides a more detailed reference for future similar cases, helping to fill legal gaps in this emerging field, while serving as an innovative model for balancing technological ethics and legal regulation in the digital age.”
“For creators, this ruling offers reassurance. It clearly establishes that those who use AI tools for creation, as long as their works demonstrate innovative design and expression, hold legitimate copyright,” he adds.
In the United States, the Copyright Office registered its first-ever copyright protection for an artwork entirely generated by AI last month.
Kent Keirsey, CEO of Invoke, demonstrated to the Office that he had inputted enough human creativity into the image to warrant protection. Keirsey sent the Office a video of him making A Single Piece of American Cheese which proved the work contained “a sufficient amount of human original authorship in the selection, arrangement, and coordination of the AI-generated material that may be regarded as copyrightable.”
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
