Artificial intelligence and copyright| ProLitteris

Artificial intelligence and copyright

Human creativity remains essential.

Artificial intelligence is changing how content is created, used, and distributed. For creative professionals, new opportunities are emerging, but also new questions about authorship, use, and royalties. We provide guidance and present solutions.

Context

What AI means for copyright

Artificial intelligence is changing how we create, edit, and use content. Generative AI can support creative processes and enable new applications. At the same time, copyright questions arise: AI systems draw on large amounts of existing texts, images, and other works. For authors, it is hardly possible to understand whether and how their works are being used. And users should be able to assess under what conditions protected content may be used for AI applications.

Copyright fundamentally protects human creative achievements. Purely machine-generated content does not enjoy this protection. If AI is used as a working tool, it therefore depends on which creative decisions a human has made. Above all, the selection, arrangement, and coordination of elements in a work are decisive. Existing rights remain relevant: AI-generated results can also contain protected elements of other works.

Fair and practicable handling of AI therefore requires solutions for everyone involved. Authors should transparently document their creative contributions and participate in the use of their works. Users need clear options for acquiring the necessary rights, even for a large number of works. We develop and support approaches that create legal certainty while making the potential of new technologies usable.

For authors and creative professionals

Protect creativity and make use of new opportunities

AI systems can use existing works on a large scale. For authors, it is often difficult to understand whether and how their content is being used. At the same time, for AI-supported works it becomes more important to record one’s own creative contribution and the creation of a work in a transparent way.

MyCopyright focuses on this documentation. You can seal and deposit your files and thereby secure important facts for later presentation of evidence. Especially for AI-supported work, this can help to document different versions of a work and your own contribution in a transparent way.

The MyCopyright service is subject to a fee.

Discover MyCopyright

For users of AI

Use AI and respect rights

AI is part of everyday work in many companies. In the process, works protected by copyright may be processed. Companies therefore face the question of how they can legally safeguard such AI uses.

Extended collective licenses (ECL) offer an approach to a solution. They can legitimize certain AI uses and at the same time make it possible to pay royalties to the rights holders.

ProLitteris offers companies licenses for certain AI uses on request.

Discover extended collective licenses

Questions and answers

Extended collective licenses allow the use of many works at the same time – including works of rights holders who do not have a management agreement with ProLitteris.

ProLitteris may grant such licenses if the statutory requirements pursuant to Art. 43a CopA are met.

To date, ProLitteris offers an extended collective license for the following uses:

Publications by memory institutions when archives or collections are made accessible on the Internet
Uses that exceed statutory limitations in a non-substantial way, e.g. for collection catalogues, journalistic reporting or exhibition catalogues
Uses for purely internal applications of artificial intelligence, e.g. for Copilot and similar AI tools

The extended collective licenses enable uses in new areas without the need to revise the Copyright Act. ProLitteris supports this statutory instrument in the interest of rights holders and users.

If works are created with AI, then – according to the general rule in copyright law – they are protected and eligible for royalties only if an original, individual human creation is expressed.

What is decisive is not a specific AI share, but the personal creative contribution of one person or several people working together. If AI is used merely as a tool and a human being substantially shapes the result, then in most cases a protected work exists. If, on the other hand, AI takes over the creation without any recognizable original human shaping, then no work arises within the meaning of the Copyright Act and there is no copyright protection, and ProLitteris does not distribute any royalty for this product.

By declaring a work with ProLitteris, you confirm as author or publishing house:

That it is a work within the meaning of the Copyright Act.
That you have created or published the work.

Furthermore, you must ensure that a work does not infringe third‑party rights and that the use of artificial intelligence does not take place in a way that prevents a work from coming into existence.

ProLitteris relies on the information and confirmation of the rightsholders and can carry out checks at any time. ProLitteris follows the development of technology and the use of AI and comments on it regularly.

For your works to be taken into account, two conditions must be met: your authorship and the status of the work under copyright law.

Your work must be an individual human creation. Content without its own creative contribution is not accepted, for example purely AI-generated results or texts and images that have been taken over in full or predominantly from third-party sources.

ProLitteris may request evidence from you in order to verify your authorship and the status as a work. In addition, random checks are carried out to ensure the accuracy and admissibility of the reports.

ProLitteris offers licenses under the common tariffs (CT) on behalf of all collective management organizations.

These include the royalty for copying in schools and organizations (common tariffs 7 and 8), for rental in libraries and video rental stores (common tariff 5), and for uses by people with disabilities (common tariff 10).

In these cases, ProLitteris is responsible, on behalf of all domestic and foreign collective management organizations, for collecting and distributing the royalties.

In addition, ProLitteris grants contractual licenses. In these cases, specific works are licensed at the request of the licensees.

You can obtain a contractual license from ProLitteris if you wish to do the following:

Reproduce specific works of art on the internet, in books, as printed matter, or in another form, provided that the artist concerned is represented by ProLitteris (Art distribution)
Use specific works from collections or archives, provided that the rights holders are unknown or cannot be located (CT 13 for orphan works)
Use a large number of texts or images, provided that the normal exploitation of the rights is not impaired in this way, for example for an «open archive», for internally used AI systems, or for minor extensions of statutory limitations (extended collective license, ECL)
As a broadcasting company, use texts and other literary works (Audio distribution)

With a license from ProLitteris, you have copyright under control. In return for a transparent and moderate royalty, you ensure that no rights of authors, artists, photographers, publishing houses, and other rights holders are infringed.

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