The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in recent years has been accompanied by a surge in patent filings by AI developers. But like many other emerging technologies before it, AI inventions face patent eligibility challenges. The US patent system exists to promote innovation, and therefore has to evolve to encourage the development of this exciting and potentially revolutionary new technology.
It may seem that AI applications, like a generative AI chatbot ChatGPT and an AI image generator DALL-E, recently appeared out of nowhere and astonished everyone with their highly advanced capabilities of conducting human-like conversations and generating creative images. However, the underlying technologies of these AI applications, such as artificial neural networks, deep learning models, natural language processing, has been in development for years. Thousands of patent applications have been filed for AI-related inventions in the United States and worldwide for these and other technologies. In fact, according to the 2022 AI Index Report from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, the number of AI-related patent applications filed worldwide between 2015 and 2022 has nearly doubled each year. Read more