Posted in Copyright
Generative AI tools produce images, articles, music, and code in seconds. Many Chicago businesses and creators use them daily to streamline marketing and communications. Companies assume the output belongs to them. Whether copyright law agrees depends almost entirely on how much of the final work came from a person.
The Human Authorship Requirement
Copyright protects original works of authorship. For more than a century, courts and the U.S. Copyright Office have read “authorship” to mean human authorship. A camera does not own a photograph. A word processor does not own a novel. The same reasoning now applies to AI systems.
Material generated entirely by a machine, with no meaningful human contribution to the expression, falls outside copyright protection. That is true no matter how polished the result looks.
In January 2025, the Copyright Office published its position in detail. Its report on AI copyrightability concluded that existing law is flexible enough to handle the technology and that no new category of protection is needed for AI outputs.
Why Prompts Are Not Enough
A common assumption is that a long, carefully written prompt should count as authorship. The Copyright Office disagrees, and so far the courts have too.
A prompt communicates an idea. The AI system then decides how to express that idea, drawing on its training data and its own processes. The same prompt entered twice can produce two very different results. Because the user does not control the expressive choices in the output, the user is not the author of it.
What Parts of AI Assisted Work Can Be Protected
AI use does not automatically disqualify a work. Protection is available when a human determines the expressive elements. That can happen in several ways.
- A human authored work is visible in the final output, such as an artist’s original drawing that an AI tool modified or enhanced
- A person creatively selected, arranged, or coordinated multiple AI generated pieces into a larger work
- A person made substantial creative modifications to the AI output, beyond minor edits
- The human written portions of a longer work that also contains AI material
In each situation, protection extends only to the human contribution. The AI generated portions themselves remain unprotected.
Keep in mind that this analysis is separate from brand protection. An AI generated logo may not qualify for copyright, but it can still function as a trademark once it is used in commerce. The differences between copyright and trademark matter here because each one protects a different kind of asset.
Registration and Disclosure
When you register a work that contains more than a minimal amount of AI generated material, you are required to disclose it and disclaim those portions. Leaving that information off an application can put the registration at risk later, including in litigation. We recommend keeping drafts, edit histories, and notes that show what you contributed and when.
Where the Courts Stand
The leading case is Thaler v. Perlmutter, in which an inventor sought to register an image his AI system created on its own. The Copyright Office refused, the district court agreed, and the D.C. Circuit affirmed. In March 2026, the Supreme Court declined to review the decision, leaving the human authorship rule intact.
Future cases will likely start drawing firm boundaries, like how much editing is enough and whether a particular workflow gives the user real control over expression. Those questions are being answered one dispute at a time.
Practical Steps for Chicago Creators and Businesses
If your company uses AI in marketing, product design, software, or publishing, a few habits reduce risk considerably.
Document your process. Keep the human created inputs and every round of revision. Review vendor and freelancer agreements so ownership of deliverables is clear, and ask directly whether AI tools were used. Before licensing or enforcing a work, confirm which portions are protectable. A Chicago copyright lawyer can review your workflow and registration strategy before a problem arises.
Competitors and infringers know the rules too. If a work is mostly AI output, there may not be a way to stop someone from copying it. But when someone copies the human authored portions, sending a DMCA takedown notice is often the fastest way to get the material removed from a website or platform.
AI is a useful tool, and the law does not punish you for using it. But ownership depends on what you added. At Patent Baron, we help clients across Chicago protect creative and commercial work that involves AI, from registration through enforcement. If you’re unsure whether your project qualifies for protection, contact a Chicago copyright lawyer at our firm to discuss your situation.
