In most countries, copyright protects work made by people. That leaves pure AI output in a grey zone.
What courts and offices have said
- United States: the Copyright Office registers only human-authored material, and a federal appeals court confirmed in 2025 that an AI system cannot be an author. Prompts alone are generally not enough.
- United Kingdom: the law has a special rule for “computer-generated works”, though how it applies to modern AI is being reviewed.
The ethical side
Even where you can claim ownership, credit matters. Say which parts were AI-made, and avoid prompting for a living artist’s style without their permission.
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