US Copyright Office Releases AI Copyright Report, DeepSeek and Alibaba Escalate AI War

The U.S. Copyright Office published 'Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability' on January 17, 2025, concluding that existing legal doctrines are adequate to determine copyright protection for AI-assisted works, provided human contribution is substantial and identifiable. The report cites historical cases like Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony (photography) and Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid (sculpture) to argue that human authorship requires creative control. It distinguishes unpredictable AI outputs from controlled artistic processes like Jackson Pollock's action painting. Meanwhile, the AI arms race between the U.S. and China intensifies. On January 20, 2025, Chinese firm High-Flyer, led by Liang Wenfeng, launched DeepSeek-R1, an open-source AI model rivaling OpenAI's o1, allegedly using smuggled Nvidia H100 chips. OpenAI accuses High-Flyer of intellectual property theft. On January 29, 2025, Alibaba released Qwen 2.5-Max, claiming it surpasses DeepSeek-V3 with a 97% price cut. The U.S. has imposed tariffs on H100 chips to curb China's AI progress. The third part of the Copyright Office dossier will address training AI on copyrighted material, a key issue for OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Alibaba. The report also references the case of Kris Kashtanova, whose graphic novel 'Zarya of the Dawn' initially had its copyright revoked due to AI-generated images, but later advocacy led to recognition of AI as a creative tool.