The Berne Convention And The Rise Of Non-Human Creativity

The exponential growth of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has shaken the principles of international copyright laws that are still mostly human-centric, with a particular focus on copyright as defined by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886). Although the Convention recognizes originality, authorship, and the moral rights of the creator as the main features of human creativity, current AI technologies like DALL•E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion can come up with the outputs that are not only similar in the visual aspect but also in the concept to the traditional works of authorship. This article deeply examines the structural differences between the Berne Convention and non-human creativity, pointing out the issues of legal personhood, originality, and moral rights as the most challenging ones. The paper also considers the comparative legal developments across various countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and India, that are the most revealing of the tension between the theoretical line of human authorship and algorithmic creativity as a matter of practice. The author of the paper reviews three possible alternatives that could fill those gaps, namely; the reinterpretation of authorship to account for human-AI collaboration, a multi-level rights system that matches protection with human contribution, and the setting up of a WIPO-led protocol for the international coordination of different approaches. The study that traces non-human creativity back to the Berne Convention's historical and normative framework rather concludes that copyright law needs to change so that it is still faithful to its original pledge to human creativity yet gives the necessary legal security in the era of algorithmic authorship.