Government and public statistics
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability
United States Copyright Office, U.S. Copyright Office, 2025
Read the originalRead on October 17, 2026
- What it is
- The Copyright Office's January 2025 report on when works that involve AI can be protected by copyright. It states that human authorship is required, that prompts alone do not give enough control, and that AI used as a tool does not by itself remove protection.
- How much weight it carries
- An official report from the agency that registers copyrights in the United States. It addresses copyright in the United States only. It is not a rule about schoolwork, authorship in a university sense, or speech recognition, and it does not cover other countries.
Facts taken from this source
- The US Copyright Office says that using AI tools to assist human creativity, rather than to stand in for it, does not affect whether the output can be protected by copyright.
“The use of AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the availability of copyright protection for the output.” (Executive summary, conclusions)
- The US Copyright Office concludes that, on current technology, prompts alone do not give a user enough control over an AI output to make that user its author.
“Based on the functioning of current generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control.” (Executive summary, conclusions)