Is AI the new mother of invention?

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools have revealed a world of ideas for new devices, vaccines and other inventions, but are those creations unpatentable? How can humans work collaboratively with AI to create an effective inventive system? Our guest Robert Plotkin, author and patent attorney at Blueshift IP, dives into the nuances surrounding AI and invention and how these tools are revolutionizing discovery as we know it.

… one of the requirements for an invention to be patentable is that it be what we call not obvious. That means it needs to have required more than ordinary skill to invent.

As tools like a ChatGPT and all other kinds of AI tools make it possible for us to generate outputs more easily, quickly, automatically, or semi-automatically just by providing certain kinds of inputs, I would say those outputs should no longer be patentable. 

But there's an interesting flip side to it, which is that we are all using these tools to help us invent. If we learn new skills that go beyond what most people know how to do when using these tools, we can actually use them to boost us beyond what the new level of ordinary skill is, right?

Robert Plotkin, author, patent attorney, Blueshift IP