Inventions becoming inventors… It might sound like sci-fi, but it's not really such a far-fetched idea. In fact, it's a prospect that's already becoming reality, given the recent news that an AI-created medicine for the treatment of OCD will be tested on humans for the first time. While the world's first patent applications for machine-designed inventions were rejected in January by the EPO, this development brings fresh attention to the AI-inventor debate. What may seem to many like simply an interesting experiment might well have far-reaching implications. Could this be the tipping point when technology goes from being a facilitator and an enhancer of human endeavour, to a developer of innovation in its own right?

Tracing the origins of US patent law, Thomas Jefferson stated that an "inventor ought to be allowed a right to the benefit of his invention for some certain time" to encourage "men to pursue ideas which may produce utility." Consistently, under US patent law, an invention requires conception, which is "the formation in the mind of the inventor, of a definite and permanent idea of the complete and operative invention," where the "inventor" refers to an "individual." The Federal Circuit explained that to "perform this mental act, inventors must be natural persons and cannot be corporations or sovereigns." The remainder of the Patent Act is also replete with references to human actions. When the Patent Act was put in place, there was likely no need to characterize the inventive process as being performed by anything other than people, because there were no such other "beings".

A sex robot inventor has said this creations will soon have a'moral code' which could affect their sex drive. Catalan engineer Sergi Santos, the inventor behind the Samantha sex robot, says that his bots will become more aroused by people who treat them respectfully. However, despite a new moral judgement code, the bots won't have the ability to be put off sex altogether, says Santos. Artificially intelligent automatons could soon be having children with their owners, claims the inventor of one of the world's first sex robots. 'Silicon Samantha' is covered in sensors that respond to human touch and can switch between'family' and'sexy' mode.