Alishea Patel

Macfarlanes LLP are most popular: within Energy and Natural Resources topic(s) with readers working within the Accounting & Consultancy industries AI-generated music is now commercially mainstream - but the legal framework is still catching up. Instead of clear rules, the industry is currently being shaped by a mix of litigation, private licensing deals, and early-stage regulation.

The European Union is at the forefront of regulating artificial intelligence (AI), with the new AI Act (the Act) being one of the first significant legislative initiatives addressing AI globally. The Act entered into force on 1 August 2024, with the majority of its rules becoming effective from 2 August 2026. It introduces a risk-based approach to the regulation of AI, classifying different systems of AI according to the risk they pose to users.

Advances in AI technologies are increasingly leading to the creation of new works with minimal human input, raising questions on the ownership of such works. This is of particular interest in the context of UK patent law, where the current position is that patent applications must name a human inventor. In the case of AI-generated inventions, the human(s) that used AI to devise such inventions should be named as the inventor in most cases.