Ethical principles: Intellectual property

This sub-guideline is part of the guideline Ethical principles. Refer to the main guideline for context and an overview. 

This sub-guideline explores the principle of intellectual property in AI governance for parliaments. It emphasizes that everyone involved in an AI system’s life cycle, including users, must respect intellectual property in order to protect the investment of rights-holders in original content. It covers copyrights, accessory rights, and contractual restrictions on accessing and using content.

Overall, this sub-guideline provides a framework for parliaments to develop and maintain AI systems that respect intellectual property rights.

In order to protect intellectual property in AI systems, parliaments should adopt a comprehensive approach. The components of this approach are detailed below:

• Before starting to develop an AI system, check for copyrighted data and any contractual conditions.

• When using generative AI, check whether the presented data sources generate copyrighted content.

• Standardize the types of documents for which generative AI cannot be used to generate content.

• Expressly inform readers if a document’s content has been written using generative AI.

• Protect parliament’s unpublished or sensitive work by avoiding uploading it into an online AI system unless there are assurances that the data will not be reused.

• Train internal staff on the technical and ethical implications of intellectual property rights.

• Create a specific peer-review process for researchers who are using generative AI, in order to both maintain high standards of quality and protect against breaches of intellectual property rights.

The Guidelines for AI in parliaments are published by the IPU in collaboration with the Parliamentary Data Science Hub in the IPU’s Centre for Innovation in Parliament. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence. It may be freely shared and reused with acknowledgement of the IPU. For more information about the IPU’s work on artificial intelligence, please visit www.ipu.org/AI or contact [email protected].