Xinpeng Liu

Xinpeng Liu

Biography:

Xinpeng Liu is a PhD student at the School of Law, University of Galway. He obtained a Bachelor's degree in Law from Nanjing Agricultural University as an outstanding graduate in 2022. During his undergraduate studies, he led a group in completing a university research project titled "The Causes of Medical Disputes and Legal Countermeasures." In 2023, he attained his Master of Laws degree from University College London. Under the guidance of Professor Sir Robin Jacob, he completed his research essay on copyright protection of AI-generated outputs. He is currently continuing his research on the copyrightability of AI-generated outputs under the supervision of Dr. Rónán Kennedy and Dr. Abigail Rekas.

Research Title: Copyright in the AI Era: Assessing the Copyrightability and Authorship of AI-generated Outputs

Research Description: The key research question of Xinpeng’s project is whether AI-generated outputs can get copyright protection with reasonable author(s) identified. The projects employ various research methods including doctrinal research, comparative research, historical research, and empirical research. The project will study how AI systems actually work and eliminate misunderstandings about them. Based on this, the research will analyse the copyrightability of AI-generated outputs from the perspectives of copyright history, copyright philosophies across different jurisdictions, originality, and human creativity. The study will also incorporate some policy considerations related to artificial intelligence. Based on these analyses, the project will seek to identify possible authors of AI-generated outputs if they are copyrightable.