On May 10, the Quality Brands Protection Committee of China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment (QBPC) Internet Committee and Artificial Intelligence & Digital IWG held an online Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, in which Professor Zhang Linghan from China University of Political Science and Law, and Alban Kwan, APAC head of Corporate Development and Strategic Alliances for CSC shared their insights. More than 40 representatives from 36 member enterprises attended the meeting.
QBPC Artificial Intelligence & Digital IWG Coordinator Eric Zhou presided over the meeting. In his opening remarks, QBPC Vice Chair Yang Tao said that artificial intelligence (AI) technology had been developing at an unprecedented speed, and enterprises had the responsibility to ensure that the development of AI could benefit society rather than become a new divergence, which required us to pay attention not only to technology but also to its social influence, social ethics, legal governance and other issues. After a brief introduction of two speakers, Yang Tao expressed his hope that everyone could have a more comprehensive and professional thinking on AI after this meeting.
Subsequently Professor Zhang Linghan elaborated on AI legislation, regulatory activities and international governance trends in terms of the relationship between AI regulation/legislation and enterprises, the compliance pain points and difficulties of enterprises and AI-related business, possible legal solutions, as well as compliance guidelines and judicial coordination in the field of IPR. She believed that in the future AI governance, enterprises would eventually act as important participants and substantially influence and promote the construction and improvement of standards and regulations of AI industry around the world. She analyzed the pain points and difficulties of enterprise compliance in her research, interpreted the concepts of algorithm deep synthesis and deep AI, service provider and technology supporter. On the issue of rational use of AI training data, Professor Zhang listed four different schemes and analyzed their feasibility. Talking about the risks of IP infringement, she said that in addition to the training data, the major risk was whether the generated content was substantially similar. She looked forward to further improvements on the judicial level of AI.
Alban Kwan then shared his understanding of AI and online brand protection from four aspects, including AI and the Internet, AI reality check and future policy development, the relationship between AI and online brand protection, AI and cybersecurity. He first analyzed the concepts of AI and semantic web from the underlying logic of the Internet, expounded the legal boundary for AI training using copyrighted imagery or text from the legal trend while discussing the questions relevant to brand protection and the conflicting rulings on AI’s ability to be the IP “author” or “inventor”.
The meeting also discussed the technical problems in AI brand protection, and applications (such as searching limitless pictures, copying articles, etc.) of AI in brand protection, the improvement of AI’s learning ability and efficiency, the real-time monitoring function, and how to generate new images for rights protection. Alban said that there were many questions about the application of AI, such as how to achieve the real protection and how to avoid potential risks.
At the end of the meeting, QBPC Internet Committee Chair Annick Wang said that member companies were facing potential risks due to the development of AI.. The meeting would help members understand the AI’s basic logic and issues related to AI and IP protection. She thanked the two speakers again for their wonderful sharing while looking forward to creating more learning opportunities for members.