Criteria and Improvement Directions for Copyright Registration of AI-Generated Works: Focusing on the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism’s “Generative AI Copyright Guide”

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) has had a significant influence on the creative methods of culture and art. In particular, generative AI, which creates an image of a desired shape by entering a command, that is, a prompt, is widely used in the production of artworks. Discussions on the copyright of artworks created using generative AI are currently active. Moreover, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced the “Generative AI Copyright Guide” to present the criteria for the copyright registration of generative AI products. In this study, based on the copyright registration criteria presented in this guide, the guidelines and major cases of the US Copyright Office were analyzed. To suggest the direction of improvement, first, through the analysis of precedents related to cameras, we determined whether AI could be viewed as a creative tool. Next, to determine whether the prompting could be viewed as a creative act, the cases of “Youngnam Cho” and “Andy Warhol” were examined, and then the precedents of the Chinese court were analyzed. The study results showed that AI is a creative tool, and when it is used as a tool, it is in accordance with Korean copyright laws and precedents, and copyright recognition under these laws depends solely on ”creative intervention” or “creative contribution through the practical work instructions” of human authors.