| The landmark case concerning AI-generated text-to-image content has posed new challenges to copyright protection under China's Copyright Law, sparking renewed academic debates about whether such content should be legally protected. Theoretically, recognizing AI-generated text-to-image content as a "work" is a prerequisite for copyright protection. The inadequacy of public goods theory and related rights protection highlights the necessity of this approach, while type-based reasoning, the incentive mechanism of copyright, and the legislative intent of the Copyright Law further reinforce its theoretical validity. Institutionally, protecting AI-generated text-to-image content through copyright law not only reflects China's policy orientation but also maximizes the value of such generated outputs. For practical implementation, courts should base their judgments on the Copyright Law and its judicial interpretations concerning the criteria for "works, " evaluating four key aspects: "within the fields of literature, art, and science, " "presented in a specific form, " "originality, " and "intellectual achievement, " while considering case-specific characteristics to determine whether AI-generated text-to-image content qualifies as a work. |