Part 1: The Zeitgeist of 2025 - A New Face Emerges
As AI-native Generation Beta is born, meet Tilly Norwood, social media’s controversial new star. She’s an actor, a model, and a budding influencer with a rapidly growing online following who engages with her fans and collaborates with brands. She is also a complete fabrication, a "synthetic human" meticulously crafted by actor/comedian Eline Van der Veden’s London-based studio Particle 6. Norwood’s emergence is no mere novelty; it is a manifestation of the 2025 technological zeitgeist. As generative AI models produce increasingly coherent and sophisticated output, and the "uncanny valley" between the real and the artificial shrinks, she represents a new frontier - not just for technology, but for the law.
Her viral popularity is a confluence of trends. For the casual observer scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, she is often indistinguishable from a human creator. This believability signals a critical shift where AI-generated content is moving beyond a tech demo and into the realm of genuine cultural and commercial impact. For entertainment lawyers, this shift is not a distant concern; it is a present reality that challenges the very foundations of our practice, starting with the most fundamental question: who, if anyone, owns the work of an AI?
Part 2: A Canadian Legal Laboratory: The "Prop"
To ground these abstract questions in a practical example, I have created a music video. This video serves as a legal laboratory, a single "prop" designed to understand the boundaries of our current laws. Its composition is deliberately complex:
- The Musical Work: The song features an original melody and lyrics authored by a human (myself), establishing a clear, traditional copyright claim.
- The Sound Recording: The song was produced using Suno, an AI music generator. This immediately raises the question of who owns the copyright in the sound recording - the human prompter/editor, the AI developer, or no one at all?
- The Visuals: The video is a montage of Tilly Norwood's digital likeness, sourced from her official web presence (controlled by Particle 6) and from videos created by other third-party creators who have made their own Tilly Norwood content.
- The Jurisdiction: The final work was created and finalized in Ontario.
I intend for this single video to serve as a recurring prop in a newsletter series to dissect a host of legal issues, from intellectual property and personality rights to the future of labour and employment in the creative industries. In this article, I will explore international copyright.
Part 3: Particle 6’s Strategic Claim
The first and most fundamental question is one of ownership. Particle 6, as Tilly's creator, claims intellectual property rights in her persona and the visual assets they generate. Their copyright claim is significantly bolstered by their strategic choice of jurisdiction. By incorporating and creating in the United Kingdom, they can lean on a specific provision in the UK’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA).
Section 9(3) of the CDPA states: "In the case of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work which is computer-generated, the author shall be taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken."
While this provision has not been rigorously tested in UK courts with respect to a complex, evolving AI persona like Tilly, its existence provides Particle 6 with a crucial statutory hook. It gives them a colorable claim to authorship that is simply non-existent in the legal frameworks of many other countries, including the United States and likely Canada. This was likely not an accident; it was a savvy business and legal decision.
Part 4: An Old Treaty for a New World: The Berne Convention
We now have a classic conflict of laws scenario: a copyright claim originating in the UK and a hypothetical infringement (my music video) created and hosted in Canada. How does a right claimed under one nation's law get recognized in another? The answer lies in a 138-year-old treaty: the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
The cornerstone of the Berne Convention is Article 5, the principle of "National Treatment." In simple terms, this principle mandates that signatory countries (which include both the UK and Canada) must give works originating from other member states the same protection they would give to works of their own nationals.
However, the application of this principle is more nuanced than it first appears. National treatment does not import UK authorship rules into Canada. Under Berne Article 5, protection in Canada is independent and governed by Canadian law (subject to Berne minima). Canada must not treat a UK work worse than a Canadian one—but Canada still decides, under its own law, whether and to what extent protection subsists here and what exceptions apply.
Accordingly, even if the UK recognizes authorship for a computer-generated work via CDPA s. 9(3), Canada does not automatically adopt that authorship allocation when assessing protection in Canada. Divergent outcomes are possible under Berne. Particle 6 has a basis to assert a claim, but a Canadian court would ultimately apply the Canadian Copyright Act to determine if copyright subsists in Tilly's images in Canada at all.
Part 5: A Divergent Global Landscape
The importance of the Berne Convention is magnified by the growing global divergence in how national laws are approaching AI authorship.
- United Kingdom: As discussed, provides a potential statutory path to copyright for the AI's output, vesting it in the human or corporate entity that made the "arrangements."
- United States: Courts and the U.S. Copyright Office have been firm that authorship requires a human hand, as confirmed by the D.C. Circuit in Thaler v. Perlmutter (2025).
- Canada: Our jurisdiction remains in a state of legal limbo. The Copyright Act does not explicitly define an author as human (though experts suggest it does so implicitly). The live Federal Court case is CIPPIC v. Sahni, which challenges a registration that credited an AI system as co-author; it asks whether Canadian law recognizes non-human authorship and whether sufficient human skill and judgment exists.
Without the Berne Convention's non-discrimination and minimum-standards framework, cross-border inconsistencies would be even more pronounced; with Berne, however, differences can still persist because the extent of protection is determined by each forum’s domestic law.
Part 6: The YouTube Test: Where Law Meets Reality
For most creators, these complex legal theories are tested not in a courtroom, but on the servers of platforms like YouTube. These platforms operate as the de facto global copyright courts, and their internal policies are the law of the land for millions of users.
Consider my music video or other fan-generated Tilly Norwood content. Hypothetically if Particle 6 were to file a copyright takedown notice against it, YouTube's dispute resolution system would likely proceed as follows:
YouTube’s systems (Content ID and/or manual review) could surface a claim from a UK-based rightsholder. Under the DMCA workflow, which governs US-based platforms, YouTube may remove or block content on receipt of a compliant notice.
The burden then shifts to the Canadian creator to file a counter-notification. If they do, the claimant (Particle 6) typically has to provide evidence that they have filed a court action seeking to restrain the activity, or YouTube may reinstate the video.
My primary substantive argument would be that copyright does not subsist, or if it subsists that my use falls under the non-commercial user-generated content (UGC)/“Youtube” exception to copyright or is fair dealing under Canadian law for parody/satire, review, news reporting, education, etc. - though the platform process itself is U.S.-law driven. Separately, YouTube now requires disclosure when content includes realistic synthetic or AI-altered media; that policy applies regardless of Berne.
Conclusion and What's Next
The simple act of a Canadian creator using a UK-based AI's image implicates a century-old treaty and exposes a deep global divide in legal philosophy. It proves that international agreements like the Berne Convention remain robust and essential tools for navigating technological disruption, while also leaving room for domestic differences on subsistence and scope. Practically, the first battles will often be fought on platforms, where takedown and dispute systems shape outcomes long before courts do.
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