With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, by inputting a few prompt words and expressing clear ideas, AI's powerful learning, analysis, and creative abilities can quickly and automatically generate personalized and adapted new works of text and images. But this creative model inevitably raises new legal issues - do AI generated works have copyright? Not long ago, the People's Court of Changshu City, Jiangsu Province, ruled in a copyright infringement dispute case that artificial intelligence generated works that reflect the intellectual labor of creators have originality and should be protected. This case is the first in Jiangsu and the second in the country to determine that artificial intelligence generated content (AIGC) has copyright. The idea was made into a physical entity without authorization. Lin Chen, born in the 1990s, is an AIGC art designer in Shanghai and has a small reputation in the AI industry. Last year, he accidentally discovered that the picture of a love balloon by the Huangpu River at night, "Companion Heart," which was designed and generated through a certain "Wenshengtu" software, had been illegally made into a physical device and displayed on the water surface of a commercial district in Changshu by a real estate company for online advertising promotion of related commercial projects. Lin Chen immediately contacted a company in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, which manufactured the gas model device, stating that its behavior was suspected of infringement and requested to be taken down, but the other party did not give a positive response. After consulting with a lawyer, Lin Chen applied for evidence preservation notarization to a notary institution and filed a lawsuit with the Changshu City Court in April 2024, demanding that a company in Hangzhou and a real estate company in Changshu stop infringing, publish a statement to eliminate the impact, and order the two defendants to compensate for economic losses of 500000 yuan. In the trial, the defendant, a company in Hangzhou, argued that there have long been related creative ideas in the industry, and balloons are spindle shaped, which is a common geometric shape. Due to the lack of originality and expressiveness, they should not constitute a work. It also believes that the work in question has almost no popularity, and the plaintiff's claim for an apology far exceeds the reasonable range. The amount of compensation also lacks basis and reasonableness, and the plaintiff is not aware of the infringement behavior of a Changshu advertising company that designed the physical device. The defendant, a real estate company in Changshu, argued that the pictures created by the plaintiff do not constitute a work and should not be entitled to copyright. They believed that the love film products placed by the advertising company did not constitute substantial similarity to the art works claimed by the plaintiff, and their claim that the products infringed their copyright could not be established. In the court hearing where the judgment constituted copyright infringement, the plaintiff provided a detailed explanation of the process of using the relevant "Wenshengtu" software for design. Due to the irreproducibility of AI tools, a series of keywords written in the software backend were displayed in court, and the process of generating images of love balloons by the Huangpu River at night was described. By continuously modifying the keywords, the size, quantity, shape, posture, and other aspects of the love balloons in the generated image content were adjusted. The plaintiff also demonstrated the process of editing images through PS software. In addition, on April 7, 2023, the National Copyright Administration registered the images of the conceptual installation "Companion Heart" as works of art, with the author and copyright owner being the plaintiff Lin Chen. The completion and first publication date of the creation were both February 14, 2023, and the text expression of the copyright registration image is consistent with that of the "Companion Heart" image. The court also found that the two defendants were accused of infringing on the images, except for some background design effects, the core of the images, which is the part where "half a heart floats on the water", is highly consistent with the content of the "Companion Heart" images. In the trial, both defendants admitted to the implementation of the heart-shaped balloon device involved in the case, but both claimed that there was no direct cooperation or contact between them, and that the specific design plan was provided by a third-party advertising company. However, neither defendant submitted the relevant advertising contract or the specific name of the advertising company. The judge reviewed the user agreement of the "Wenshengtu" software used by the plaintiff in court and logged into the creation platform to examine the login process, user information, and image iteration process of modifying prompt words. According to the law, it was determined that the plaintiff's modifications to prompt words (i.e. keywords) and the processing of image details through PS software reflected their unique choices and arrangements, and the resulting floor plan was original and protected by copyright law. In summary, the court ruled that the image of "Companion Heart" in question reflects the author's unique choices and arrangements, has originality, and constitutes an art work in the sense of copyright law, which should be protected by copyright law. The two defendants' unauthorized online dissemination of the image constitutes infringement. The copyright enjoyed by the plaintiff should be limited to this image. The defendant Changshu real estate company's physical construction based solely on "love" does not constitute an infringement of the plaintiff's copyright. Based on the plaintiff's evidence of reasonable expenses, the final judgment is that the infringing party publicly apologized to the plaintiff for three consecutive days and compensated a total of 10000 yuan for economic losses and rights protection costs. After the verdict, neither the plaintiff nor the defendant appealed, and the verdict in this case has now come into effect and been fulfilled. Why does the judgment determine that the defendant's construction of the physical device does not constitute infringement of the plaintiff's copyright? Hu Yue, the presiding judge of the case and deputy chief judge of the Intellectual Property Division of Changshu City Court, believes that the works for which the plaintiff enjoys copyright should be limited to the "Companion Heart" flat art works listed in the attachment of the work registration certificate, rather than the three-dimensional art installation of half a heart. The plaintiff did not construct a three-dimensional art installation for their 'Companion Heart' painting and actually landed it. Even if the related balloon installation landed on the Huangpu River, it should still be the art installation itself that can be evaluated by copyright law, provided that the art installation itself has originality Hu Yue believes that the half heart balloon in the picture of "Companion Heart" in this case is only half of a simple red heart, and many previous cases have used similar creativity. Therefore, the design of the half heart is too simple and lacks creativity. Therefore, the design of the half heart should not be solely evaluated as a work and the construction of the three-dimensional device should not be deemed as infringement. The images used by the two defendants on social media platforms, online stores, etc. are highly consistent with the "Companion Heart" image in the comparable parts, with only minor differences such as size cropping, partial material smearing, and text addition. Therefore, the images published by the two defendants as a whole constitute substantial similarity Hu Yue analyzed that the two defendants provided the public with their right works through the Internet without the plaintiff's permission, which infringed the plaintiff's right to network dissemination of works information. At the same time, the images in "Companion Heart" were all labeled with the author's identity. The defendant did not truthfully label the author's identity when using the images involved in the case, which infringed on the plaintiff's right of authorship of the work. Regarding the plaintiff's claim that the defendant has infringed upon their right to reproduce and distribute their work, the judgment holds that the Copyright Law does not protect creativity or ideas, and the copyright owner cannot prohibit others from using the ideas or information reflected in their work. Therefore, the two defendants put into practice ideas similar to the plaintiff's works through on-site construction and other means, which does not constitute a reproduction from three-dimensional to three-dimensional, nor does it constitute a reproduction from flat to three-dimensional. Therefore, the plaintiff's claim that the construction of physical devices infringes on their right to reproduce and distribute their works is not accepted. Although the law does not prohibit AIGC from being protected by copyright law when it possesses originality, the level of originality of AIGC should still be comprehensively judged based on specific circumstances Hu Yue analyzed that although the "Companion Heart" image in this case has been constantly changed or modified by the plaintiff's prompts or PS, the main part of the modification is the shape of a half heart in the water, and the heart itself does not have originality. Therefore, the compensation amount was ultimately determined based on the specific situation of this case. This case is a typical case of carefully determining the copyright of content generated by artificial intelligence. It clarifies that the prerequisite for AI generated images to be recognized as works is that they should be able to reflect human creativity and intellectual input Hu Yue analyzed that in the value chain of "prompt words algorithm models generation results modification applications", AI users are upgraded from operators to "authors" in the sense of copyright law, which is conducive to stimulating creators' enthusiasm for using AI tools for innovative creation and helping the AI industry develop healthily on the track of the rule of law. (New Society)