Shanghai's first case related to AI-generated prompts copyright was pronounced today.

According to the news from the Shanghai High People's Court, on the afternoon of November 6, the Huangpu District People's Court of Shanghai issued a first-instance judgment in the first AI prompting word copyright infringement case in Shanghai. After reviewing the case, the Huangpu District People's Court believed that the six groups of prompt words involved in the case adopted the basic structure of artistic style, main elements, materials and details, scientific context, and main composition, which are essentially instructions or descriptions input by users into AI systems to guide the generation of specific images. From a formal perspective, although they contain multiple elements, the elements are only listed simply without logical grammar connections; the key word combinations are disordered and lack hierarchical progression as well as narrative sequence in scenarios. From the perspective of originality analysis, these prompt words lack the personalized features of the author, and the artistic style, material details, etc. used are all conventional expressions in the field, not reflecting the author's unique aesthetic perspective or artistic judgment. At the same time, the prompt words involved in the case only reflect abstract creative ideas and instruction sets, focusing on the listing and description of image elements, artistic styles, presentation forms, etc., which are more related to abstract creative concepts and belong to the realm of ideas. Therefore, although the prompt words in the case reflect certain creative intentions, they do not reflect the author's personalized intellectual input in terms of expression and should not be deemed as works. The plaintiff does not have copyright in the prompt words and therefore has no right to claim copyright infringement. Thus, the Huangpu District People's Court made a first-instance judgment: rejecting all claims of the plaintiff.