Rapid advances in artificial intelligence chatbots are challenging centuries-old principles in intellectual property — and prompting calls for changes to patent and copyright laws.

A new wave of powerful “generative” AI chatbots — such as ChatGPT from OpenAI and Google’s Bard, both of which can produce plausible text and images in response to conversational prompts — has given fresh urgency to ongoing debates in the legal profession and wider society. Should an AI system be considered an inventor and granted a patent for its invention? And how should regulators respond to copyrighted material being fed into AI systems?

Stephen Thaler, a US-based AI expert, has been at the forefront of the debate after he filed two patent applications that named his AI machine Dabus as the inventor of a food container capable of changing shape, and of a flashing light. He has brought legal challenges against IP offices around the world after they rejected his applications and ruled that an AI system cannot be named as the inventor on a patent.