From Leonardo to the Next Rembrandt – The Need for AI-Pessimism in the Age of Algorithms

Abstract

I. IntroductionLaw is a fiction, 2 and copyright law is an excellent example for legal fictions. All its norms, definitions, doctrinese.g. creativity, originality, personality, economic and moral rights, limitations and exceptions, to name a feware created and regularly re-created by human minds to serve metaphorical purposes. 3 At the same time, copyright law is not a limitless fiction. It has its historical development, roots, subjects, objects, purposes and limits. The ultimate question of copyright law is nothing else than why and to whom do laws assign copyright protection? 4 And the short answer to these questions is simple enough: expressions of the human mind shall be protected for the benefit of individual creators on the one hand and mankind in general on the other hand. This shall serve as a starting point and a guiding light when assessing the impacts and guessing the future of copyright protection of outputs/contents generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).The symbiosis of copyright protection and technological innovation dates back to centuries and has been closely connected ever since the modern movable type-based printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg. In most cases, both society and the rights holders have profited from this symbiotic interconnection, as the new technologies were created for the sake of humanity and rights holders became entitled for compensation. On the other hand, Jessica Litman pointed out that "[c]opyright laws become obsolete when technology renders the assumptions on which they were based outmoded". 5 New (disruptive) technologies have made copyright law fragile. This fragility was further exaggerated by the delayed (and occasionally ineffective) legislative reactions. Likewise, users have always been more willing to take advantage of innovations rather than strictly following the provisions of copyright law (and paying royalty to the authors). Unsurprisingly, 1 The author of this paper would like to thank the organizers and participants of the meetings where parts of this paper were presented, including the 4 th Binational Seminar of the TU Dresden and the Charles University in

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