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.