| Tartalmi kivonat: | This paper explores the evolving concept of originality within EU copyright law, focusing on its implications in the context of mass production and artificial intelligence (AI). While originality, defined as the author’s own intellectual creation, has long served as a foundational yet low-threshold requirement for copyright protection, recent technological developments and legal harmonization efforts have challenged its adequacy and coherence. Drawing from legislative history, CJEU case law, and doctrinal literature, the authors investigate two core questions: (i) how the existing low originality threshold affects copyright in an AI-driven creative landscape, and (ii) whether this threshold should or could be adjusted or refined. The study highlights how the proliferation of creative content – both human- and AI-generated – narrows the ‘margin of manoeuvre’, i.e., the room for creative freedom, complicates originality assessments, and raises systemic questions about authorship, expression, and protection. Proposals such as AI-based originality assessments and a double-threshold system are examined for their potential to address these challenges. Ultimately, the paper argues for a re-evaluation of originality’s role and criteria, with a stronger focus on the existing criteria regarding the author’s ‘personal touch’, to maintain the integrity and adaptability of European copyright law in the digital age.
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