Josh Waterston

Josh Waterston is of counsel to Wilftek LLC, where he practices privacy law as part of his larger practice in technology and intellectual property law. Josh has over 20 years of experience as an attorney.

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Infinite Monkey Selfies: Intellectual Property Protection for Generative Artificial Intelligence Creations

The Infinite Monkey Theorem states that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of keyboards would eventually generate the complete works of William Shakespeare. A more recent, and far more limited test of this theorem involved a professional photographer named David Slater providing several great apes with access to his cameras. The photographer sold copies of the resulting monkey selfies, which in turn generated a great deal of discussion and a few court cases over the question of who owned the copyrights in the selfies.

In the past year, the issue has shifted from monkey-created works to generative AI works. Who owns the rights to works and inventions created in whole or in part by a computer program? Who will speak for the monkeys? And will chatbots speak for themselves?

Privacy Law Update 2022

Privacy law continues to evolve as recently-passed legislation in California has led to new regulations and the creation of a privacy-specific agency in California, i.e., the California Privacy Protection Agency. Other states are following California’s lead by passing new laws and regulations, all while Congress considers whether or not it wants legislate in this field.

The focus of this talk is recent changes in privacy law and what they mean to IT people working in the field and to the general public.