Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have attained new capacities for creative expression, invention and innovation – demonstrating the ability to generate valuable works and discoveries traditionally presumed unique to human endeavor. However, enduring intellectual property (IP) regimes around copyright, patents and related protections largely encode anthropocentric assumptions of human creators, authors and inventors. This research analyzed the resulting debates on whether/how to expand IP systems to encourage AI innovation. Through critical review of salient literature, poll-based expert perspectives, case law assessments, and historic-comparative policy analysis, key tensions and trade-offs emerged around growing machine creativity’s constraints under human-centric IP laws versus upside risks over-extending rights prematurely or allowing accumulation. Yet appetite persists for tailored expansion. Survey insights revealed skepticism on outright designating AI programs as legal inventors or authors per se. However, majority support materialized around instituting supplemental, streamlined protections for algorithmic outputs surpassing creative contribution thresholds. South Korea’s copyright regime for AI authors offers a potential model. Findings illuminated discordant views on appropriate attribution or ownership models for IP generated by AI systems rather than users/developers. This signals difficulty achieving global policy consensus at the foundational level. Core challenges also center on reconciling romantic notions of human exceptionalism coded into law with machine matching/exceeding those creative capacities we esteem as pinnacles. In conclusion, while advances accelerate, moderate statutory evolution shows promise in avoiding constraints, provided policy strikes equitable balances between safeguarding access and reasonably incentivizing ongoing AI innovation across sectors. But mechanisms should stimulate human and machine creativity collectively rather than force binary choice on origins of imagination’s spark. Further interdisciplinary examination is warranted.