Keynotes & Lectures
Panel Discussion
Licensing and the 1976 Copyright Act: A Retrospective
Berkeley–Columbia Copyright Symposium · 2024
The role of licensing in shaping the 1976 Copyright Act's architecture, and what that history teaches about the current challenge of licensing AI-generated and AI-trained content.
Colloquium Presentation
The Human Cause
Advanced IP Colloquium, University of Houston · March 2026
A presentation of the human cause framework — the argument that IP law should require genuine human proximate causation behind protected works and inventions — and its implications for copyright and patent doctrine in the age of generative AI.
Download Slides (PDF) →Audio
Audio Overview · AI-generated discussion
Should AI Have Intellectual Property Rights?
Based on The Human Cause · March 2026
An AI-generated audio discussion of the central arguments of "The Human Cause" — exploring whether intellectual property law should require a genuine human cause behind the works and inventions it protects, and what is at stake if it does not.
Video & Podcasts
Podcast · Reality Check, Episode 1
Is AI a New Species? Copyright, Creativity, and the Future of Human Work
Centre on Knowledge Governance, Geneva · Interview by Ben Cashdan
The inaugural episode of the Centre on Knowledge Governance's Reality Check podcast. Ben Cashdan speaks with Daniel Gervais about whether AI is like a new species that could make it impossible for human creators to compete, or a tool that can help solve the world's problems; what instruments humans should use to govern AI and its appetite for training data; whether science and research call for a different approach than music and entertainment; what AI means for journalism; and who owns the copyright in AI-generated works. The conversation also touches on Gervais's science-fiction work, The Coexistence Trilogy.
Watch on YouTube →In the News & Interviews
EUobserver
Does Copyright Protect Your AI-Generated Content in Europe? Let's Find Out
A question-and-answer interview on who, if anyone, owns text produced by tools such as ChatGPT or Claude. Topics include whether a verbatim AI-generated post can be owned at all, what happens when a journalist feeds an interview recording and research into an LLM and publishes the result, why a publisher receives no rights in such an article, and how much human contribution is needed before copyright attaches. Putting your name on AI-generated text, Gervais notes, is a provenance mark that carries liability but confers no copyright.
Read at EUobserver →AI-Forum
Interview on AI and Copyright: Memorisation, Authorship, Licensing & More
A wide-ranging interview covering the most pressing questions at the intersection of AI and copyright law: whether AI training implicates the reproduction right, the legal treatment of RAG systems, the fair use debate in US courts, the protectability of human–AI co-created works, and what an optimal licensing framework would look like. Published in Dutch by AI-Forum, the Netherlands-based platform for AI and law. (Interview in Dutch.)
Read at AI-Forum (LinkedIn) →NPR
The New York Times Takes OpenAI to Court
Quoted on the copyright stakes of the NYT v. OpenAI hearing: "If you're copying millions of works, you can see how that becomes a number that becomes potentially fatal for a company."
Read at NPR →Washington Post
AI Copyright Lawsuit Hinges on the Legal Concept of 'Fair Use'
Quoted on the NYT v. OpenAI lawsuit and the fair use question in AI training data cases. Discussed how the Supreme Court's Warhol decision complicates the picture for tech companies, and predicted that a licensing settlement was the most likely outcome for business plaintiffs: "Anyone who's predicting the outcome is taking a big risk here."
Read at the Washington Post →NPR Planet Money
Authors Sue OpenAI for Using Copyrighted Material
Consulted as an expert source for an episode examining the copyright questions raised by OpenAI's use of authors' books to train ChatGPT, including the scope of fair use as a potential defense.
Read transcript at NPR →NPR Morning Edition
OpenAI Is Facing Lawsuits Over Copyrighted Materials
Interviewed on the legality of AI training on copyrighted content, the limits of fair use doctrine, and what the New York Times' potential lawsuit against OpenAI would mean for the industry. Noted that under current law, fair use for AI training was "more likely than not" but far from certain.
Read at NPR →Los Angeles Blade
Copyright Expert Discusses Fair Use of Original Artworks by AI Apps
Quoted on the copyright questions raised by AI image-generation tools and whether their use of artists' works without permission constitutes fair use under US law.
See Vanderbilt coverage →Additional press coverage, podcast appearances, and talks will be listed here as they become available. If you are a journalist covering AI and intellectual property, please use the contact information on the About page.