THE Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) is moving to clarify copyright protection for artificial intelligence (AI)-generated works, proposing rules that could affect businesses, creators and technology users increasingly relying on AI to produce content.
The proposed guidelines would allow copyright protection for AI-assisted works when there is sufficient original human creative input, while excluding purely AI-generated outputs that lack such contribution.
The draft Guidelines on the Registrability of AI Systems and AI-Related Works were presented during an initial public consultation by the Bureau of Copyright and Related Rights. IPOPHL said the measure aims to provide greater certainty for creators, companies and other users as AI becomes more integrated into creative and commercial activities.
Under the proposal, AI use alone would not prevent a work from being registered. Protection may cover portions containing original expression attributable to a human creator and meeting the originality requirement under Philippine law.
The draft classifies AI-related works into four categories. AI-assisted works use AI as a tool while the human author provides original expression. AI-enhanced works begin as human-created works and are subsequently modified using AI. Hybrid works combine human-authored and AI-generated elements, with protection limited to qualifying portions.
Purely AI-generated outputs without sufficient human creative contribution would not be protected by copyright to the extent that they lack original human expression. Thus, merely providing a
general prompt and submitting the resulting AI-generated image would not, by itself, establish copyright ownership.
IPOPHL said applications may be evaluated based on the nature and extent of human creative contribution, the role of the AI system, and how AI-generated elements were selected, modified, arranged or incorporated into the final work.
For AI systems, registration would cover only copyrightable expression in the computer program and would not extend to training data, materials used as training data or AI outputs that are not otherwise copyrightable.
IPOPHL Director General Teodoro C. Pascua said the proposed guidelines are intended to provide clarity for copyright registration rather than regulate AI generally or make a definitive determination on the copyrightability of all AI-related works.
The guidelines remain subject to consultation, with IPOPHL set to consider comments from government, industry, academe, legal practitioners and the public before further revisions. / KOC