I have always wondered how patents and copyright apply to deep learning networks. It is pretty obvious that the NMIST deep learning convolution network uses the same algorithm patented in letter separation patents by OCR companies. And yet ...

I wonder if you were to go further. Suppose you let a sufficiently deep neural network see all simpsons episodes for instance. And it manages to make new simpsons episodes. This will at some point become possible. At that point, does it count as a new work ? Does it fall under simpsons copyright ? Where is the line ?