AI Is Moving Faster Than the Rules

Artificial intelligence is making it easier to write software, create images, develop stories, produce video, and turn ideas into tangible work.

That accessibility could open the door for more people to participate in fields once limited by specialized expertise, expensive resources, or geographic proximity to centers of innovation.

But for Andrei Iancu (UCLA ’87), the technology’s promise comes with a significant warning: AI is advancing far faster than many of the legal and policy frameworks designed to govern what people create with it.

And the longer that gap remains, the more difficult the questions become.

Iancu has spent much of his career at the intersection of technology and law. An aerospace engineer before becoming an intellectual property attorney, he later served as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

From that perspective, he sees AI as more than another emerging technology. It is forcing policymakers, businesses, creators, and inventors to reconsider some of the basic assumptions underlying intellectual property.

At the center of the debate is a seemingly simple question: Who created the work?

The answer is becoming increasingly difficult to define.

When the Creator Is No Longer Just Human

Patent and copyright systems were developed around human invention and authorship. Iancu noted that the constitutional foundation for patents and copyrights refers to authors and inventors, and that the legal system has treated those roles as belonging to human beings.

Artificial intelligence disrupts that framework.

AI can assist someone writing software. It can generate an image based on a prompt. It can help develop technical ideas, write stories, produce video, or contribute to the process of creating something that may eventually have significant commercial value.

At one extreme, the answer appears relatively straightforward. Iancu said the U.S. Copyright Office has generally taken the position that something produced purely by AI is not copyrightable, while the Patent Office has similarly maintained that an invention produced entirely by AI, without human intervention, cannot be patented.

But Iancu sees the phrase “purely by AI” as the beginning of the problem rather than the end of it.

“The reality, though, is that nothing is done purely by the machine,” he said. “There’s always a human-machine interface, and where the line of creativity is drawn is unclear.”

Someone selects the tool. Someone provides the prompt. Someone may refine the result, reject certain outputs, combine others, and make decisions throughout the process.

How much human involvement is enough?

At what point does AI stop being a tool used by an inventor or author and become the source of the invention or creative work itself?

Those lines are difficult to draw, and the technology is not waiting for the legal system to draw them.

“The question has not been answered yet,” Iancu said.

That uncertainty may sound abstract until money enters the equation.

Then it becomes a business problem.

Why Legal Certainty Matters

Innovation often requires investment long before a product reaches the public.

Companies spend money researching ideas, hiring employees, developing technology, creating content, marketing products, and bringing new work to market. Intellectual property protections can give those companies confidence that competitors cannot simply duplicate what they have spent significant resources developing.

AI creates uncertainty around that bargain.

Iancu offered a hypothetical example involving a studio producing a feature-length animated movie primarily or exclusively through artificial intelligence.

The technology may make the movie possible. But if the resulting work does not qualify for copyright protection, the economic calculation changes dramatically.

“In what world do we think Disney or whoever is the producer will invest the money to create that feature-length movie, and then all the millions of dollars it takes to bring it to market, advertise it, and distribute it, if it becomes instantly copyable by somebody else?” Iancu said.

The example gets at a larger issue.

Companies do not make investment decisions based only on what technology can accomplish. They also consider whether the resulting inventions, products, and creative works can be protected.

If the answer is uncertain, investment can become uncertain as well.

“I personally believe this is very problematic because industry does not behave well when it doesn’t have clear answers,” Iancu said. “Industry needs certainty to make investments.”

For Iancu, that is why the AI debate cannot remain merely theoretical. The decisions governments make — or fail to make — can influence whether companies are willing to spend the money required to transform new ideas into products and services.

His position is that some form of protection must remain available as AI becomes more integrated into the creative process.

“In my view, protections of some form under the rule of law need to be available for AI-supported creations,” he said.

Exactly where those protections should begin and end remains unresolved.

But Iancu believes leaving the boundary undefined carries its own consequences.

Technology Is Not Waiting for Policy

Governments have confronted disruptive technologies before. What makes AI different, in Iancu’s view, is the speed at which the technology is developing and spreading.

Historically, technological advances have created both opportunities and disruptions. Over time, workers, companies, communities, and institutions have adapted to new tools.

AI is compressing that timeline.

“Typically, what happens when you have major technological advancements, there is time for technology to be adopted,” Iancu said. “It takes some time, and it allows folks to adapt into it.”

With AI, that adjustment period may be considerably shorter.

The capabilities of widely available AI systems have advanced rapidly, while businesses and individuals are already incorporating the technology into everyday creative and technical work.

Policy, meanwhile, must contend with questions that did not exist in the same form only a few years ago.

For Iancu, that mismatch between technological development and governmental response is becoming increasingly important.

“The question needs to be answered, in my opinion, quickly, because technology is overtaking our policy here,” he said.

That does not mean every answer is obvious.

It means the absence of an answer is becoming less sustainable.

The Possibility of Broader Participation

The intellectual property questions surrounding AI are only part of Iancu’s concern.

He also sees enormous potential in what the technology could make possible for individuals who historically have had less access to the innovation economy.

AI tools can reduce some of the technical barriers that once separated an idea from execution.

Software development provides one example. A person using AI-assisted coding tools may be capable of building something that previously would have required substantially more programming experience.

Similar changes are occurring in creative fields. AI can help users generate and edit images, develop written material, and create other forms of content.

“Artificial intelligence tools, AI tools in particular, do make it easier to create and to innovate,” Iancu said.

At the broadest level, he views that as part of a familiar pattern.

“Historically, advances in technology create more opportunities,” he said.

That possibility is particularly significant given Iancu’s longstanding concern about who participates in American innovation.

During his time in government, he focused on the geographic, economic, and demographic concentration of innovative activity in the United States. He saw large portions of the country, lower-income communities, women, and people of color participating in the innovation economy at disproportionately low rates.

AI could help lower some of those barriers.

But it could also reinforce them.

A Tool That Could Widen the Gap

The same technology that makes creation more accessible can disproportionately benefit those who adopt it first, understand it best, or have greater resources to deploy it.

That creates a paradox.

AI may democratize access to sophisticated tools while simultaneously concentrating the economic rewards generated by those tools.

“If you just let it happen purely organically, you risk further concentration of wealth and opportunities among the first movers into the space,” Iancu said.

The difference may come down to adoption.

Making an AI tool available does not automatically mean everyone benefits equally from it. Individuals still have to know the technology exists, understand how to use it, have access to the necessary infrastructure, and recognize ways it can be applied to their work or ideas.

Communities already closely connected to technology and innovation may move faster than those that are not.

Because AI itself is evolving so quickly, Iancu said it remains unclear whether enough time exists for adoption to spread broadly before early advantages become entrenched.

“It’s too early to tell whether it’s going to be enough time for the technology to be adopted and accepted broadly,” he said.

The result could move in either direction.

AI could become one of the most powerful tools yet for broadening access to innovation.

Or it could make an already concentrated innovation economy even more concentrated.

“I do have a concern that it has the possibility of creating further concentration of technology and wealth,” Iancu said.

An Unfinished Question

There is no clean ending to the debate because the central questions remain unresolved.

How much human involvement should be required for an AI-assisted invention to receive a patent?

When does an AI-assisted creative work qualify for copyright protection?

How should intellectual property law encourage investment without granting protections that no longer fit the realities of how something was created?

And how can the benefits of increasingly powerful technology reach people and communities beyond those already positioned to take advantage of it?

Iancu does not pretend those questions have simple answers.

What concerns him is the growing distance between how quickly they need to be answered and how rapidly the technology continues to change.

AI is already reshaping creation and invention. The legal system now has to determine how protections built around human ingenuity should work when human ingenuity increasingly operates alongside machines.

The possibilities are substantial. So are the consequences of getting the rules wrong — or allowing the technology to move forward without clear rules at all.

For Iancu, that is what makes the moment urgent.

Technology is advancing. Investment decisions are being made. New works are being created. New inventions are taking shape.

Policy now has to catch up.