From Human Hands To Machine Minds: The Authorship Dilemma
- IJLLR Journal
- Nov 20
- 1 min read
Anshika Kumari, National Law University, Odisha, Jomjar Padu, National Law University, Odisha
I. Introduction
The rise of generative AI has changed creativity in different ways which refuses long term held notions relating to authorship and originality. Copyright law since long assumed that creativity in humans is the product of skill, labour and imagination. Machine learning systems nowadays, trained on huge data sets are writing poetry, composing music, creating visual art, and even academic writing with little or no ongoing human intervention. This movement presents a pressing question: who, if anyone, can justifiably lay claim to such pieces of work?
The argument over AI authorship is complicated. Whether human input is enough if it's refining prompts or tweaking algorithms is always a question of meeting criteria for originality. There are also rival claims between users and owners of AI over control and ownership. On an international scale, regulatory fragmentation makes the issue even more complicated since legal systems are at variance on what to categorize AI-created works. Apart from law, there's also the issue of human creativity as a whole: if content created by AI becomes predominant, will this kill the incentive for people to create?
This essay argues that while copyright must remain grounded in human authorship, it should also evolve to acknowledge AI’s transformative role through policies that balance innovation, fairness, and cultural enrichment.
Authorship has been based on philosophy and Salmond also defined that authorship is granted to legally recognised person and not biologically which anyone can be author if law recognises it as person. There have been theories which shaped copyright law namely Labour theory given
