Can Artificial Agents be Authors?
摘要
Current Generative Artificial Intelligence models have become incredibly close to the human level of linguistic and artistic excellence, defying our conception of artworks as uniquely human products, resulting in an authorship problem, i.e., whether artificial agents can be regarded as genuine authors of their products. This paper provides a definition of institutional authorship to evaluate this possibility, using John Searle’s Speech Act Theory and Theory of Institutions. To apply the definition, we focus on artistic cases, assuming the institutional theory of art. According to the institutional authorship definition proposed, authorship is the product of an agent’s declarative acts in the context of relevant institutions granting the agent’s deontic powers for performing such acts. These acts depend on sincerity conditions encompassing intentional states, which bind the product with an agent. We conclude that artificial agents cannot satisfy the institutional definition of authorship due to their inability to be institutional agents, meaning they cannot be authors.