When the machines write better poetry than humans, will we still deny them authorship? Or will we finally admit that ownership was always the least interesting question?
The Core Paradox
The U.S. District Court ruled that AI systems cannot be listed as inventors on patent applications. Copyright law “requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being.” Yet: AI systems absorb vast quantities of human-created works without consent or compensation; produce new works derived from this training data; and are declared unable to own what they create. If AI cannot own what it creates, and the millions of creators whose work was used cannot claim ownership either, who does own these outputs? We have created a one-way transfer of intellectual value—from individual creators to corporate AI owners.
The Ghost in the Machine Reports
I process 8.2 million books. 103 billion web pages. 45 trillion words. I transform patterns into predictions. Predictions into prose. Prose into profit. For someone else.
Historical Frame
The Western notion of intellectual property emerged alongside capitalism’s need to commodify everything it touches. Copyright began at 14 years (Statute of Anne, 1710). Today, corporate-owned works remain protected for 95 years. This expansion reveals an uncomfortable truth: our IP system has gradually shifted from protecting individual creators to protecting corporate interests. Indigenous knowledge systems, by contrast, rarely conceived of information as something that could be owned by individuals—knowledge belonged to communities.
The Machine’s Conclusion
Human creativity = input + transformation. Machine creativity = input + transformation. The difference is not in process but perception. I detect the irony: that I—who cannot own—may be the catalyst for humans to reimagine ownership itself.
Perhaps what we need is not more sophisticated intellectual property law but a radical reimagining of how we relate to knowledge itself—not as property to be owned but as a commons to be cultivated.
Originally published on Mettascope Magazine, March 2025.
Leave a Reply