Recently, we have been seeing more and more visual materials created with the help of artificial intelligence. Clients often ask us whether it is necessary to mark these images with specifics (for example, with the words "created with the help of artificial intelligence") when they use such images or graphics or place them on their products.

Legal context

There is currently no legal provision in the Czech legal environment that explicitly requires the labelling of images generated by artificial intelligence. Although domestic courts have already ruled in several cases concerning the use of AI, they have not yet commented on this issue.

From the existing case law concerning the use of artificial intelligence, we consider the judgment of the Municipal Court in Prague (No. 10 C 13/2023 -16) to be crucial, in which the court stated that an image created by artificial intelligence does not meet the conditions for a work of authorship under Section 2 of the Copyright Act, as it is not a unique result of the creative activity of a natural person - the author.

Our recommendation

Although there is no legal obligation to label creations created with the help of artificial intelligence, we recommend our clients to be transparent on this issue. AI is trained on pre-existing works and unintentional similarities with others' works may occur. In our opinion, it is this transparency that can prevent potential disputes or help resolve them amicably.

A more complex situation arises when the final output combines AI-created and human-created parts. If it is possible to reliably distinguish what is human-made, this part can be considered a work of authorship. A further issue may arise (and in practice this is probably the most common case) when a human intervenes in the AI output - here it is necessary to examine in detail whether these interventions are in the nature of a unique creative activity. If so, the combination may be considered a work of authorship, although not necessarily as a whole.

If you are dealing with AI and copyright issues, members of our team specialising in this area will be happy to help.

Mgr. Jaroslav Hroza, Partner

Bc. Lucie Šalanská, paralegal