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Struggling for creativity and the beauty of human error - copyright authorship meets generative AI and neuroscience

Trapova, Alina; (2025) Struggling for creativity and the beauty of human error - copyright authorship meets generative AI and neuroscience. SSRN: Amsterdam, Netherlands. Green open access

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Abstract

This paper explores the fundamental role of human struggle in the context of copyright-protectable works and sophisticated generative AI (genAI) technologies. While AI tools offer creators unprecedented assistance in eliminating mistakes and perfecting outputs, this paper argues that imperfection, frustration, and emotional complexity are central to the human creative process and over time could become the hallmark for authorship under copyright law. Drawing from interdisciplinary insights and applying Jane C. Ginsburg’s benchmarks for originality (detailed conception and controlled execution) the paper demonstrates that genAI content fails to meet the threshold for authorship, primarily due to the absence of the controlled execution integral to human creativity. The paper then turns to the human nervous system in order to justify that such outcome is in fact normatively sound and does not require any legislative amendment. It brings evidence to this populated academic debate from the discipline of neuroscience. Overall, the paper contends that copyright law should prioritise process over product, recognising creativity as deeply human, error-prone, and emotionally driven, in stark contrast to the sterile machine output.

Type: Working / discussion paper
Title: Struggling for creativity and the beauty of human error - copyright authorship meets generative AI and neuroscience
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5363523
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: copyright law, authorship, originality, creativity, neurscience
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Laws
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10214132
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