On 27 January 2023, RIA submitted expert comment on the Copyright Amendment Bill to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, Economic Development, Small Business Development, Tourism, Employment and Labour of the National Council of Provinces, the upper house of the South African Parliament. The input explains how the interface of AI and copyright has changed dramatically since the Bill was first introduced in Parliament in 2017. For example, ChatGPT is an AI software service that produces outputs that resemble text produced by humans.
The emergence of these technologies raises the question whether outputs by them should be awarded copyright. RIA recommended that, to protect artists and authors, human creativity should be the only output that is copyright.
