Intellectual Property and Creative Machines
This is a preliminary draft and may not have been subjected to the formal review process of the NBER. This page will be updated as the chapter is revised.
The arrival of creative machines--software capable of producing human-like creative content--has triggered a series of legal challenges about intellectual property. The outcome of these legal challenges will shape the future of the creative industry in ways that might jeopardize welfare. Policymakers are already busy considering how regulations will have to adapt to best support a post-generative AI creative industry. Economics has an important role in this context, and this paper is our attempt to contribute to the discussion. We identify the main economic issues and propose a framework and some tools for thinking about them.