The U.S. Copyright Office published the second part of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence, covering whether material produced with generative tools can be copyrighted. It concludes that protection applies only where a person determined the creative expression, through a human-authored element visible in the output or through creative arrangement or editing, and that prompts alone are not enough. The Office found no case for new legislation covering AI-generated output, and a third part on training models on copyrighted works is still to come.
What changed
Whether AI-assisted outputs could be registered rested on 2023 registration guidance alone, without a full policy analysis.
What it unlocks
Registering work that includes AI-generated material when a person contributed the creative expression or arranged and modified the output.
- more than 10,000 public comments
- Part 1 published 31 July 2024
What you need to act on it
- human creative contribution beyond entering prompts
- copyright.gov2026-08-12