US Copyright Office issues guidelines for AI-generated works: Prompts alone not enough for copyright protection

The US Copyright Office (USCO) has released guidelines for registering copyright for works created using artificial intelligence (AI). The guidelines state that simply generating a work using AI, such as through a prompt, is not enough to qualify for copyright registration. The work must also involve human creativity or involvement in some way. The USCO emphasizes that copyright law grants rights exclusively to humans, and if a work is created entirely by an AI without human input or involvement, it cannot be eligible for copyright protection.

As an example, the USCO explains that if someone orders an AI to write a poem about AI, and the AI generates a poem based solely on its programming, without any human input or involvement, then that poem would not be eligible for copyright protection. However, if a human takes that poem and modifies it, adding creative elements and making it into something new, then the resulting work may be eligible for copyright protection.

The guidelines also reference the famous “monkey selfie” case, where a monkey took a photograph of itself using a camera owned by a wildlife photographer. The US courts ruled that the monkey could not own the copyright to the photograph, as it was not a human being.