The U.S. Copyright Office’s Position on the Copyrightability of Works Made With the Assistance of Generative AI

This article originally appeared in the 2024 Artificial Intelligence (AI) IP Year in Review report. 

Since platforms like Midjourney and DALL-E became popular, using text-to-image models to generate “AI art” has surged, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between AI-generated art and human-created works. This rapid evolution in art generation challenges global intellectual property law. Recognizing these challenges, the Copyright Office issued “Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence” (Guidance) in March 2023, clarifying copyrightability requirements for works that contain AI generated content. Despite its recent issuance, the Guidance reflects a longstanding principle of U.S. copyright law: some human involvement is necessary for a work to be eligible for copyright protection.