AI, IP, and competition policy: adjusting policy levers to a new GPT

This chapter contributes to the emerging debate on the intersection between IP as a set of legal norms and AI as a novel technology. The issue of the regulation of IP as applied to AI is highly topical in light of the rapid progress and increasing impact of AI as a technology on our lives and the numerous debates surrounding IP protection for AI tools and outputs. The chapter examines the suitability of different policy levers to improve and maintain incentives to invent and invest in AI. It argues that the fundamental technological and economic uncertainty surrounding AI renders anticipatory doctrinal adjustments in IP law, such as AI inventorship, undesirable. Rather, scholarship should focus on the design of policy levers capable of flexibly accommodating a variety of different technological and market outcomes, in particular on the IP-Competition Interface. It also proposes a research agenda for the IP-Competition Interface in relation to AI, focusing on obligations to share access to closed systems and IP rights.