The risk of overprotecting human content creators

Generative AI is challenging the foundations of copyright law, which has long been tied to human effort. As Singapore reviews its intellectual property regime, a key question arises: how do we value creativity when AI can produce work in minutes?

Dr Ben Chester Cheong, Associate Academic Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law, Faculty of Law at NUS, argues that rewarding the "sweat of the brow" is an outdated approach. He warns against either over-protecting human-only work, which stifles innovation, or automatically granting copyright to low-effort AI outputs.

To strike a balance, Dr Cheong proposes a middle ground where copyright hinges on originality, not just labour. For AI-assisted work to be protected, it must show "meaningful human creative control" beyond a simple prompt. Meanwhile, works generated almost entirely by AI should remain outside copyright unless a clear economic need for protection is proven.

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