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Although artificial intelligence models can efficiently produce content, they are trained to scrape pre-existing works without direct attribution. As AI becomes more advanced, concerns about the protection of creator ownership continue to grow.

With these violations of individual ownership in mind, iSchool Professor Adam Moore discusses the importance of intellectual property in his new book,

“With all the bells and whistles, along with the more complicated systems to come, AI is not intelligent,” Moore writes. “These systems don’t understand the meaning of what is generated. AI imitates intelligence, understanding and thoughtfulness.”

Intellectual property rights grant owners of creative efforts the rights to these works. Such rights are protected by laws such as those governing copyright, patent, trademark and trade secrets.  

Moore presents five distinct philosophical arguments for intellectual property rights, explaining why they are necessary and how they might be codified into legal systems. He also critiques all the major objections to intellectual property.

Released in February, the book was inspired by work that goes back to his Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy at the Ohio State University. 

Moore said that while AI is constantly improving, its practice of scraping the web for original work and presenting it as its own has become integrated as a norm and presents a threat to authors, inventors and creators.

“Along with other forms of copying, imitation, misrepresentation and information pollution, we have arrived at a rather precarious moment,” Moore said in an interview.

He explained that some stores, such as Abercrombie & Fitch, have a distinct vibe they can copyright as their own “look and feel.” With AI, that same idea applies to writing, where AI can scrape the “look and feel” of a person’s writing style and begin writing in their voice.

“I think that's going to be where the fight around AI ends up, where AI starts scraping every text you've ever sent, every email, every paper and it can now write as you would write,” he said.

Moore said that in this instance, AI technically does not violate any copyright laws because it’s not directly copying a specific instance of scraped text. Instead, it’s using the text to generate something eerily similar. 

“You might say AI is copying the look and feel of artists and inventors, and ultimately may copy the look and feel of each and every one of us,” he said.

Due to AI's ability to present scraped materials as “new” so efficiently, there is an increased need for intellectual property rights to protect innovators from AI’s scraping capabilities, Moore said. 

“Because of digital technology and the way we have the ability to easily copy the efforts of authors and inventors — and AI has put this all on steroids — you no longer get much innovation because AI is just going to boil things down to what it scraped before,” he said.

Moore worries that the reliance on AI will strip humans of the ability to express their own ideas creatively. 

“If everyone is trained using AI, you're never going to get the muscles to be able to create, and so we'll see a tamping down or lessening of real innovation across human endeavors if we rely too much on AI,” he said.

Strengthening protections for intellectual property, privacy and personality rights, he argues in the book, will help societies harness AI’s productive potential while preserving the human capacity for innovation.

"Defending moral and legal claims to intellectual property, privacy, and personality, will allow us to face this future and resist many of the worst tendencies of human nature,” he writes.