Lawyer's 6-year-old son uses AI to build copyright infringement generator
Rights holders had better buckle up for years of legal wrangling, IP lawyer tells The Reg
You don't have to be smarter than a fifth grader (or even a first grader) to commit potential copyright infringement using AI tools. One IP attorney watched over the weekend as his young son built a bedtime story generator that used copyrighted characters without permission.
"When experimenting with Google's AI Studio over the weekend, my 6-year-old son had the idea to create a website that would tell stories and generate pictures of the story," US IP lawyer Jonathan Menkes, a partner at the Knobbe Martens law firm, explained in a blog post. "In less than 2 minutes, he created a fully interactive website, including the proposed name 'Bedtime Story Weaver.'"
All it took to get Menkes the younger to create his tool was a few basic prompts that were "so simple, even a six-year-old with zero coding experience" was able to create a web app asking users to provide a target age, theme, characters, an optional morale or lesson, learning objective, preferred story length, and tone, to get an instant AI-penned tale.
First up, Menkes' son generated a story about a dragon and knight, which came with an accompanying photo. So far, so good, Menkes explained, "but my son's imagination did not stop there."
Next he prompted his vibe-coded story generator to give him a story about video game character Sonic the Hedgehog going on an adventure with Nintendo's mascot, Mario. A few more details added, and boom: Google AI Studio's custom website spat out a story about Sonic and Mario questing for coins.
"As an IP attorney, this was jaw-dropping," Menkes said. "My sweet little son unwittingly created something that I spent over a decade of my life preventing others from doing."
The evolution of a legal arms race
El Reg readers probably aren't surprised to find that AI-enabled copyright infringement is so simple – we've covered it multiple times of late, most recently with OpenAI's Sora making it a snap for anyone to place copyrighted characters into custom scenarios without the permission of holders of those IPs. Menkes said that the incident with his son illustrates that not everyone in the IP space is prepared to face the myriad challenges stemming from AI tools.
"As IP practitioners, we need to understand how this technology works and anticipate the problems and opportunities it affords," Menkes told The Register in an email. "This is exactly what happened to me over the weekend when having a bonding moment with my son."
While there are plenty of concerns to be had over how AI companies are using and misusing copyrighted content to train their models, Menkes posits his bedtime story incident as one that should alarm IP holders regardless of what AI companies are doing.
"Intellectual property holders … should be prepared for a potential tsunami of software applications and websites that push the boundaries of current IP law," Menkes warned.
At a minimum, the IP lawyer suggested, IP holders need to review their existing methods of monitoring the web for copyright infringement to ensure all the potential misuse of their brands is being captured, as current methods are likely insufficient for the modern world of AI IP infringement. To illustrate that point, see our prior coverage of how neutral prompts – e.g., "video game plumber" instead of Super Mario – will still return copyright-infringing imagery.
Combatting such deeply embedded IP infringement, Menkes said, is going to require copyright holders to take a more direct approach.
"Brand owners should go further and have people within their organizations test each new AI tool on the market to determine whether it includes internal safeguards to prevent users from generating unauthorized content," he recommends. Along with that approach, Menkes also recommends that IP holders have a triage plan in place to take quick action when any infringement is discovered.
That said, in an era where it's as easy to reproduce and manipulate copyrighted IP as typing a prompt into a text field, IP holders also need to recognize that it's not like the olden days of IP law.
"I think that IP owners and AI companies can find ways to work together so both can benefit from the tremendous opportunities this new technology provides," Menkes told us. "Companies that can stem the infringement while also creating opportunities for creative outlets will be the ultimate victors in this AI race."
OpenAI has already paved the way for rightsholders to monetize their IP on Sora, for example, after blowback from Hollywood and others over how easy it was to reproduce their properties. Disney has also taken upon itself to use AI to monetize its own IP by giving Disney+ subscribers the ability to create their own AI content of Disney characters.
Even with those sorts of arrangements, however, Menkes believes that IP law is going to have to significantly evolve in the coming years. What that may look like, though, isn't even clear to this IP expert.
"So much of case law is developed out of fact-specific cases, so we will have to be patient with the courts as they continue to grapple with these thorny issues," Menkes told us.
"I fully expect that takedown procedures will need to be refined given the sheer volume and speed at which content can be pushed out," he cited as one example of how IP law will change while noting that "tremendous legal battles" are likely to be fought in the meanwhile.
"It will be up to policymakers to weigh the pros and cons of enacting legislation that places the burden [of controlling IP infringement] on AI developers, but I think brand owners have strong motivation for wanting to shift more responsibility to those developers," Menkes added.
Speaking of the developers, Google didn't respond to questions about the ease with which its AI Studio produced IP-infringing content. ®