WIPO launched its first Global Forum on Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence in Geneva on November 9–10, bringing together governments, creators, innovators and technology companies to examine how IP should adapt as AI changes the way inventions and creative works are produced.
Opening the Forum, WIPO Director General Daren Tang called for the global IP community to confront the scale and speed of technological change.
Because this may no longer be a moment for safe conversations, for wait and see, for business as usual. The decisions that governments, technology companies, creators, innovators and institutions take over just the next few years will shape the relationship between humanity and technology for generations to come.
- Daren Tang
What should IP protect in the age of AI?
Mr. Tang identified three questions: what IP should protect and incentivize, how the system should adapt, and how to make the economics work for creators, innovators and users.
He called for new licensing practices and remuneration mechanisms to help creators, rightsholders and AI developers agree on the use of protected material.
“So the question cannot simply be who has the legal power to say no. We must also ask, how can we create workable ways for people to say yes?” he said.
Ren Ito, Co-founder and Chairman of Sakana AI, asked how IP could recognize human contributions when people invent with AI. He illustrated the question with a hypothetical example of a researcher who draws on past experience to change an AI-proposed experiment and achieves a successful result. Recording only the final success would miss the judgment behind that outcome.
“When people invent with AI, how can the IP system capture the judgments they make along the way so we can see what each person actually contributed?” he asked.
Beyond the question of human contributions, AI in Action showcases demonstrated how innovators and creators are using AI to accelerate scientific discovery, address local challenges and open new possibilities for artistic expression. Anant Madabhushi, Executive Director of Emory University’s Empathetic AI for Health Institute, described research using AI to help predict patients’ responses to cancer treatment. He traced one technology’s path through patenting and licensing to clinical trials. Multidisciplinary artist Inch Chua showcased in a live demonstration how she uses AI in her creative process.
Super Sessions and Deep Dive Discussions explored how to keep human creativity and innovation at the center of an AI-driven world, the IP questions surrounding AI technologies and their development, and the potential role of IP in protecting human attributes such as voice, image and likeness.
Recording artist and technologist Imogen Heap described encountering music falsely attributed to her and called for ways for people to set permissions for AI uses of their voice and likeness.
The Forum also highlighted the evolving role of IP offices worldwide, examining how AI is transforming their operations and how they can better serve tomorrow's creators and innovators. Heads of IP offices and technical specialists also discussed deploying AI in search, examination, classification and service delivery.
In a One-Stop-Shop segment, experts from around the world gave updates on developments in litigation, regulation and licensing.
The Forum’s opening session featured recorded remarks from senior government and IP leaders from Egypt, Finland, Japan, Lebanon, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and Zimbabwe. More than 5,000 participants registered for three days of discussions at WIPO headquarters and online, encompassing the Global Forum on IP and AI and the first annual meeting of the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Interchange (AIII) on November 11.
Related Initiatives
At the Forum, WIPO piloted experimental AI interpretation in seven languages and provided live captions in 20. The program also included the introduction of the Global Innovation Index (GII) AI Assistant (beta), designed to help users explore innovation data and insights.
The AIII Annual Meeting on November 11 focuses on practical infrastructure questions, with expert presentations on industry workflows, metadata, AI-generated content and a common lexicon for AI and IP.