Recently, the Huangpu District People's Court in Shanghai delivered a judgment on a copyright case related to AI prompts. A cultural company in Shanghai employed AI technology to generate artistic images by inputting prompts that encompassed artistic styles, subject elements, material specifics, and so on. These images were then published on the internet. Soon after, the company found that netizens Zhu and Sheng had posted artworks that were strikingly similar, using the exact same prompts. This prompted the company to file a lawsuit against the two individuals, accusing them of copyright infringement and demanding that they cease the infringement and provide compensation.
The plaintiff company asserted that the prompts in question were the product of its intellectual creativity and should therefore be protected by copyright. On the other hand, the defendants argued that the prompts were merely a collection of words, representing ideas rather than a tangible expression, and thus did not constitute infringement.
The court ruled that for a work to be eligible for copyright protection, it must demonstrate originality and reflect the personalized intellectual efforts of its creator. Although the prompts in question did reflect creative intent, they lacked personalized expression and remained within the realm of ideas. As such, they should not be recognized as a copyrightable work. Consequently, the court dismissed all of the plaintiff's claims.