CCTV News: Have you ever experienced the fun of wearing ancient Hanfu "one-click face change"? Nowadays, with the popularization of AI technology, technologies such as one-click face swap are becoming more and more common. A network technology company in Shanghai developed a mini program and launched the "One-click face-changing ancient style Hanfu" project, but they received a summons from the court for this. What's going on?

On a certain online video platform, open the mini program developed by this company in Shanghai, select a short video of a woman in ancient costume, upload a character photo as prompted, and watch a 30-second advertisement, you will get an ancient style Hanfu video with a face-changing face. By chance, photographer Chen found this mini program that can "change face-to-face ancient style Hanfu" online. But what surprised her was that among the short video materials provided by the mini program, more than ten of them were her original works. Chen handed a complaint to the People's Court of Jiading District, Shanghai. In court, Chen's attorney presented evidence.

The plaintiff believes that the defendant Shanghai Yimou Network Technology Co., Ltd. used his own works without permission to infringe on the information network dissemination rights of his works, and asked the company to immediately remove the infringing videos, apologize, and compensate for economic losses and reasonable expenses for rights protection. The defendant argued that they had changed their faces before putting the videos on the shelves, which was not exactly the same as Chen's videos, and it was a creation.

"AI Face Change" partially replaces the original video. How to protect copyright?

So, if a company that develops mini programs uses AI to change faces and uploads the works of photographer Chen to the Internet for users to change faces again to synthesize new videos, does this behavior constitute infringement?

The court found that although the defendant Shanghai Yimou Network Technology Co., Ltd. modified the facial features of the characters through AI technology, the core elements such as composition, scenes, character styling, and creative expression of the newly generated video still retain the originality of the original work. In this regard, the judge believed that although these modified videos do not necessarily infringe on the portrait rights, the defendant used an AI algorithm to partially replace and synthesize the original video, which constitutes substantial similarity.

The second focus of dispute in this case is whether the defendant uses the plaintiff's work reasonably.

The first instance court held that the defendant Shanghai Yimou Network Technology Co., Ltd. used "AI face-changing" as the selling point and provided platforms, materials and technology, so that users could use the original video in a "face-changing" manner at any selected time and place to seek commercial benefits, infringing on the right to disseminate information of the plaintiff Chen's works.

In the lawsuit, the defendant Shanghai Yimou Network Technology Co., Ltd. actively cooperated with rectification actions such as deleting videos and performing algorithm filing procedures, and accepted judicial suggestions issued by the court and made a commitment to standardize business. The plaintiff Chen expressed his understanding and withdrew his request to stop infringement and apologize. Based on this, the court ruled that the defendant Shanghai Yimou Network Technology Co., Ltd. would compensate the plaintiff Chen for economic losses and reasonable expenses totaling 7,500 yuan. After the first instance judgment, neither party appealed.