US Copyright Office Deems AI Works Need Human Creativity To Be Protected

Image generated on AI

Those wishing to own their creations will need to stash more than just prompts into their toolkits. The US Copyright Office has drawn a clearer line between machine-made content and artistry, reaffirming that copyright protection belongs to human creators.

While artificial intelligence can undoubtedly generate believable results, it still lacks the one thing that copyright law values most: human creativity. The latest report from the office, entitled Copyright and Artificial Intelligence — Part 2: Copyrightability and published January 29, 2025, clarifies that works entirely produced by AI are ineligible for protection, though AI-assisted creations with clear human input may qualify.

Under the new guidelines, simply feeding prompts into a tool like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Midjourney doesn’t make someone the rightful copyright holder. The Copyright Office makes it apparent that a meaningful creative contribution—such as modifying, arranging, or integrating AI-generated elements into a larger work—is necessary to establish human authorship. Each case will be reviewed individually to determine the level of human involvement.

The updated report, issued by Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, emphasizes that copyright law was designed to safeguard human expression, not machine-generated content. It arrives as legal tensions surrounding AI are ramping up, including the debate on how AI models are trained using copyrighted materials. A third edition is expected to explore these issues further, tackling licensing concerns and potential liabilities for AI developers and users.

“After considering the extensive public comments and the current state of technological development, our conclusions turn on the centrality of human creativity to copyright,” clarifies Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the US Copyright Office.

“Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection. Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine, however, would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright.”

This stance has wide-ranging implications for industries that are fast integrating AI into their production. Filmmakers, musicians, writers, and digital artists who rely on AI tools will need to ensure their own creative input is demonstrable if they want copyright protection. A  case involving a 2022 AI-generated artwork, Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, serves as a key example. The Copyright Office denied full protection for the piece, ruling that its human creator didn’t exert enough creative control over the final output.

Creatives looking to safeguard their work will need to ensure their fingerprints are unmistakably present—because when it comes to intellectual property, AI can generate, but it can’t fully make, write, or build like humans do.

[via VentureBeat, Associated Press, ABC News, cover image generated on AI]