Beijing Internet Court orders Baidu to pay 1,560 yuan in China's first AI-generated-content copyright case

What happened

Beijing Film Law Firm sued Beijing Baidu Netcom Science & Technology Co., Ltd. after a report the firm first published on its WeChat account on 9 September 2018 appeared the next day on Baidu's Baijiahao platform without permission, with its signature and some sections removed.

What the court decided

The Beijing Internet Court ruled that Baidu infringed the firm's right of authorship, right of integrity, and right of information communication on networks. Baidu was ordered to pay 1,560 yuan (about $226) and to publish an apology on the Baijiahao homepage within seven days of the judgment taking effect. The court's own report describes the case, ruled on 25 April 2019, as China's first case about the protection of copyrighted content generated intelligently by software.

What this establishes — and what it does not

This establishes that Baidu's platform republished a law firm's report without permission and was held liable for it. Baidu argued the report was automatically produced from online big-data collection rather than originally authored; the court did not accept that defence. The case is about republication on Baidu's platform, not about training data for ERNIE, and it does not by itself prove any training-data claim.