AI Prompts Alone Are Not Human Authorship, Long-Awaited US Copyright Office Report Declares

The U.S. Copyright Office issued the second part of its policy report concerning copyright and artificial intelligence (AI). The office’s findings include:

• “human authorship” is required for copyrightability;
• existing US copyright law is sufficiently flexible for new technologies and no legislative changes are necessary to address the copyrightability of AI-generated material; and
• determinations of copyrightability of works incorporating AI-generated material will be made on a case-by-case basis.

The office also maintains that generative AI prompts, “based on the functioning of current generally available technology,” do not constitute sufficient human authorship for the purposes of copyright protection, as they “do not alone provide sufficient control” over outputs.

Finnegan partner and leader of the firm’s copyright practice, Anna Chauvet told World Trademark Review that by qualifying its position that AI prompts alone — “based on the functioning of current generally available technology” — do not constitute human authorship, “The office thus acknowledged the possibility that prompt engineering may become sophisticated enough to exert sufficient creative control, leaving the door to copyrightability open.”

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