Katharine Stephens and Toby Bond of Bird & Bird LLP examine the intellectual property issues that arise when developing and using artificial intelligence systems.
Although artificial intelligence (AI) can sound like the stuff of science fiction, we are already interacting with AI-based systems on a daily basis. Voice assistants, purchase prediction, fraud detection, chatbots and a whole host of other applications already implement a number of techniques that fall under the umbrella term “AI” (see box “What is artificial intelligence?”).
This article was first published in the July 2018 issue of PLC Magazine.
Following publication of this article it has been kindly brought to the authors' attention that the European Commission Communication on Artificial Intelligence for Europe referred to in the final paragraph does in fact identity intellectual property as one of the areas which will need to be tackled to ensure an appropriate ethical and legal framework for AI. See section 3.3 of the Communication for further details.