US Patent office has issue guidelines for the use of AI in patented inventions:
On Tuesday, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said that to obtain a patent, a real person must have made a “significant contribution” to the invention and that only a human being can be named as an inventor on a patent.
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As an example, if someone just asks an AI to design a machine part on its own from scratch, that is not patentable. But if a human produces a preliminary design or some detailed specifications and asks the AI to modify it or improve it, that would presumably be patentable.
This is similar to rules already given for copyright protections, which have declared that AI-produced literary works cannot be copyrighted unless there is a significant contribution by a human.
I suppose we can expect a bazillion lawsuits over the years to decide what is or isn’t a “significant contribution” by a human.