In November 2020, India recognized copyright for Artificial Intelligence (AI) paintings, but the opposition to this intensified so the copyright registration was withdrawn the following year. Copyright is an exclusive right about the creation of art, science, or culture by the creator or the person who acquired the right. However, since what the current copyright law protects is a person or a corporation, copyright is not recognized for creations created by natural objects or artificial intelligence. In this situation, the opinion that the copyright of AI should be guaranteed or the creations of AI will be misused, infringing on the rights of AI developers exist. However, other people claim that the copyright of AI should not be recognized based on the risk of monopolization of AI and the current copyright laws.

Under the current law, content created by a non-human is not subject to copyright, so it is not considered a copyrighted work and cannot be protected under copyright law. However, as science is gradually developing, AI is starting to create its own works. DALL-E, released in January 2021 by Open AI, is an AI model that can draw pictures based on input texts. Just like people would ask a painter to draw a portrait of themselves, when they enter a command to DALL-E, the AI then creates an image by itself. As we can see, AI, like humans, can create original creations on their own, so copyright must be recognized. If the copyright of AI's creations is not protected, it may cause social confusion about plagiarism issues of the creations and violate the AI developer's rights. Also, since the current copyright law was amended before modern technology was developed, it is difficult to say that it is an appropriate law. Therefore, the copyright of creations by AI should be protected.

First, without legal recognition of copyright of AI, creations by them can be abused. Copyright[1] was created in the past to protect creations from the problem of distributing or using other people's creations without the permission of the author. However, since creations created by AI are not recognized, people can easily plagiarize them. If the copyright of AI's creations is not consistently acknowledged, many people can distribute or sell them individually. In addition, if AI continues to create many more works, controversy over plagiarism may arise between the produced works. This is because accurate legal judgment is hard to do at the present when the concept of AI copyright does not exist. Son Seung-woo, Professor of Chung-Ang University Graduate School of Industrial Security, said in the 2017, “With the development of AI technology, AI creations will appear in large numbers in various fields such as music, art, and software. In order to prevent confusion caused by copyright disputes of AI creations, AI creations must also be protected by copyright,”, expressing his opinion on the copyright of AI.

Second, not acknowledging AI’s copyright violates the rights of AI developers. According to Article 22 of the Korean Copyright Act, copyright holders of secondary creations citing original works are recognized as copyright holders of those secondary creations. Also, the right to create a derivative work based on the original author's work is the exclusive right of the original author. If someone makes a derivative work of other’s work without permission, it violates the rights of the original author. Therefore, in order to create secondary works such as arrangements or parodies, people must get permission from the original author, and they may have to pay a royalty in return. In addition, even if it is a secondary work, it may have exclusive rights in relation to a third party. There is no reason to disapprove the copyright of an AI when copyrights of both the original and secondary works are protected. AI is recognized as a developer's creation because developers must analyze principles, theories, algorithms, etc. and build a system. In principle, the developer can acquire the copyright for the software development output. In other words, if the original author of an AI is a developer and the creation of the AI is a secondary work, the copyright of the creation of the AI must also be acknowledged. Therefore, if the copyright of AI creations is not recognized, it can lead to enormous damage to the developer, just like not recognizing the copyright of derivative works. In fact, in China, YingXun copied the text of 'Dreamwriter,' an AI writing system made by Tencent, without permission. In response, a Chinese court awarded Tencent for infringement damages.

Third, the current copyright law was created before the advent of AI, so it is not suitable for the present situation of the 4th industrial era. The present copyright law limits the subject of creations to a human being. However, this law was enacted in 1857, before AI could make creations of their own. Modern society is developing rapidly, but law remains in its old place and cannot keep up with the speed of scientific development. Therefore, it is not suitable for the present time to oppose the copyright of creations created by AI unconditionally. When the camera was invented, copyright was not recognized for pictures taken with a camera because the principle of the camera was to reproduce objects on film. However now, photography is recognized as an artist's creation, and the copyright law also recognizes the copyright of photography. If perceptions change with the development of science like this, the copyright of creations created by AI must be protected too. In addition, the overseas trend is recognizing the development of science and increasingly recognizing the copyright of creations created by AI. In September 2022, the United States recognized the copyright of “Zarya of the Dawn”, a collaboration between the story of author Kristina Kashtanova and the painting of AI Midjourney. The copyright was also granted to the AI Midjourney. In addition, France's music copyright association (SACEM) recognized the copyright for the creations of AI artist Aiva. Just as changes are gradually being made abroad, new laws related to AI and intellectual property rights are needed in Korea along with the 4^th industrial revolution.

In modern society where the idea that only humans can create new works has taken hold, the idea of granting copyright to creations created by AI may not be appropriate. However, technology is developing rapidly, and AI, like humans, is creating new creations on its own. In this situation, if people insist on outdated ideas and do not acknowledge the copyright of artificial intelligence, it can cause great confusion when AI creations are further developed and created in larger numbers. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent misuse and abuse of AI creations and infringement of developer rights, and to recognize the copyright of AI creations through an account of the current copyright laws.