Is Artificial Intelligence Finally Recognized as a Creator? The Copyright Office's Decision

After a relatively exhaustive study of the issue, the Copyright office has made a set of recommendations on whether materials generated by artificial intelligence should be protected by copyright.

The recommendations made are:

• Questions of copyrightability and AI can be resolved under existing law without legislative change.

• Using AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the availability of copyright protection for the output. 

• Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author, even if the work also includes AI-generated material. 

• Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material or material with insufficient human control over the expressive elements.  

• Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed case-by-case.  

• Based on the functioning of current, generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control.  

• Human authors are entitled to copyright in their works of authorship that are perceptible in AI-generated outputs, the creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of material in the outputs, or creative modifications of the outputs.

• The case has not been made for additional copyright or sui generis protection for AI-generated content.