Articles | Open Access | https://doi.org/10.37547/ajsshr/Volume06Issue01-12

Moral Rights In An AI-Driven Creative Environment

Eshmurodov Zoyir , Head and Chief Lawyer (CLO) of the law firm “ZOXA LAW”, established in the United States of America

Abstract

The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) challenges fundamental assumptions underlying moral rights doctrine, particularly the long-standing premise that creative works embody a personal connection between author and expression. As AI systems increasingly produce expressive content autonomously or in collaboration with humans, jurisdictions grounded in droit d’auteur theory must confront the erosion of human–centric authorship. This article examines the viability of moral rights in an environment where human agency is distributed, partial, or ambiguous. It evaluates the adaptability of existing moral rights frameworks—specifically the European Union’s strong moral rights tradition, the Berne Convention’s minimum standards, and the United States’ limited Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). The article argues that moral rights require doctrinal modernization, moving away from anthropocentric assumptions and toward a rights-allocation model based on creative stewardship, attribution integrity, and transparency in AI-assisted creativity.  

Keywords

Moral rights, authorship, artificial intelligence

References

Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 1886, as revised at Paris, 1971.

Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society.

Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, 17 U.S.C. §§ 106A.

U.S. Copyright Office, “Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices,” Third Edition, 2017.

European Court of Justice, Case C-5/08, Infopaq International A/S v. Danske Dagblades Forening, 2009 E.C.R. I-6569.

Reese, T., Moral Rights in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Challenges and Prospects, Journal of Intellectual Property Law, Vol. 28, 2021.

Dreier, T., Copyright and AI: Rethinking Moral Rights in Machine-Generated Works, European Intellectual Property Review, 2020.

Hughes, J., The Author in the Machine: Legal and Philosophical Issues in AI-Generated Works, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 34, 2021.

Ginsburg, J., Moral Rights and the International Copyright System, Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts, Vol. 35, 2012.

European Commission, Proposal for a Regulation on AI and Intellectual Property: Implications for Copyright and Moral Rights, 2023.

United States Copyright Office, “Copyright Registration Guidance for Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence,” 2022.

Article Statistics

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Copyright License

Download Citations

How to Cite

Eshmurodov Zoyir. (2026). Moral Rights In An AI-Driven Creative Environment. American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research, 6(01), 48–51. https://doi.org/10.37547/ajsshr/Volume06Issue01-12