by EarlKing | 2025-08-22 13:51:35+00:00
This is what you get for skimming. :D

Just to be sure that I wasn't misremembering, I went through part 2 of the report and back to the original memorandum[1] that was sent out before the full report issued. I've included a few choice quotes to illustrate my point:

"These are no longer hypothetical questions, as the Office is already receiving and examining applications for registration that claim copyright in AI-generated material. For example, in 2018 the Office received an application for a visual work that the applicant described as “autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine.” 7 The application was denied because, based on the applicant’s representations in the application, the examiner found that the work contained no human authorship. After a series of administrative appeals, the Office’s Review Board issued a final determination affirming that the work could not be registered because it was made “without any creative contribution from a human actor.”"

"More recently, the Office reviewed a registration for a work containing human-authored elements combined with AI-generated images. In February 2023, the Office concluded that a graphic novel comprised of human-authored text combined with images generated by the AI service Midjourney constituted a copyrightable work, but that the individual images themselves could not be protected by copyright. "

"In the Office’s view, it is well-established that copyright can protect only material that is the product of human creativity. Most fundamentally, the term “author,” which is used in both the Constitution and the Copyright Act, excludes non-humans."

"In the case of works containing AI-generated material, the Office will consider whether the AI contributions are the result of “mechanical reproduction” or instead of an author’s “own original mental conception, to which [the author] gave visible form.” The answer will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work. This is necessarily a case-by-case inquiry."

"If a work’s traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it."[1], pgs 2-4

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On the odd chance that somehow the Copyright Office had reversed itself I then went back to part 2 of the report:

"As the Office affirmed in the Guidance, copyright protection in the United States requires human authorship. This foundational principle is based on the Copyright Clause in the Constitution and the language of the Copyright Act as interpreted by the courts. The Copyright Clause grants Congress the authority to “secur[e] for limited times to authors . . . the exclusive right to their . . . writings.” As the Supreme Court has explained, “the author [of a copyrighted work] is . . . the person who translates an idea into a fixed, tangible expression entitled to copyright protection.”

"No court has recognized copyright in material created by non-humans, and those that have spoken on this issue have rejected the possibility. "

"In most cases, however, humans will be involved in the creation process, and the work will be copyrightable to the extent that their contributions qualify as authorship." -- [2], pgs 15-16

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TL;DR If you make something with the assistance of AI, you still have to be personally involved and contribute more than just a prompt in order to receive copyright, and then you will receive protection only over such elements of originality and authorship that you are responsible for, not those elements which the AI is responsible for.

--- [1] https://copyright.gov/ai/ai_policy_guidance.pdf [2] https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...