Who owns AI-generated content?

What does ownership mean?

Tools like ChatGPT require a few sentences for input and can generate several pages of content, which has birthed a new era of content generation. These tools give organizations the option to publish fully AI-generated content or AI-assisted creations. With both options, the big question is: Who owns AI-generated content?

Ownership of fully AI-generated content

The U.S. Copyright Office maintains that AI-created works without human involvement are not eligible for any copyright protections. A few cases have outlined and confirmed this stance from a legal perspective, such as Thaler v. Perlmutter. In this case, the court ruled AI-generated work could not hold any copyright and be protected.

AI-created works without human involvement are not eligible for any copyright protections.

In a similar ruling, the EU's Court of Justice outlined that copyright protection only applies to a human creator's intellectual content creation, which means anything fully AI-generated would not be protected.

Another case in the Czech Republic centered around an AI-generated image, and the court ruled it was not protected under copyright. The judgment noted that if a person did not create the image, but an AI tool did, it cannot be a copyrighted work.

Alternatively, ChatGPT uses publicly available content to teach itself and understand the different topics users ask about. So, the true owner of AI-generated content could be the source of the articles or posts available online. While ChatGPT is not currently required to reference its sources, users should understand that this tool relies on other content to generate its responses.

However, many people also assume the user who requests the AI-generated content owns it. This is often because users must edit the content to sound more natural and fact-check it, and they are ultimately the ones who publish it.

Ownership of content created with AI assistance

One could argue that most AI-generated content requires human contribution through prompts, other configurations and input. However, while one can assume a human is technically the one envisioning the content, in some interpretations of copyright laws, any computer-generated work with human assistance could be considered protected under copyright, as long as there is significant human involvement.

Are there laws around AI-generated content?

Major advancements in AI -- especially image creation, voice cloning and deepfakes -- have increased people's concerns about the technology, as bad actors can use it to impersonate individuals and spread misinformation. As a result, more talks around creating AI policies are taking shape.

The U.S. has seen a significant increase in litigation around AI and copyright. Book publishers, media giants like the New York Times and other publishers have sued the makers of ChatGPT, claiming OpenAI models were trained on their articles and content publicly available online.

AI organizations and U.S. government entities have had discussions to define rules around privacy, liability, copyright and intellectual property for GenAI tools and content they create. As a result, the AI Bill of Rights was created. Similar to the EU's AI Act, the AI Bill of Rights provides best practices for AI governance in the U.S.

The U.K. government has considered changes to its existing copyright laws to let AI companies use copyrighted content unless its authors opt out, but content creators have opposed these changes.

China has taken a different approach to AI regulation. The country requires those who publish AI-generated content to label it as such, in an effort to increase transparency, address concerns around the source of the content and battle misinformation.

What does the future hold?

It is undeniable that AI is here to stay, and it will transform organizations and change workforce requirements. Already, contact centers use AI-based virtual support agents and chatbots, while other organizations are reducing their dependency on content creators.

While AI has many advantages, it also presents various concerns, including potential unethical uses, bias, misinformation and true ownership. It also faces the ongoing battle around intellectual property rights.

Additionally, the lack of regulations and transparency on the source of GenAI's training materials also concerns many users. As more governments recognize that AI is moving at a significantly high speed, they will aim to accelerate policy creation.

Editor's note: This was originally published in 2023 and updated to reflect changes in global AI policies and regulations.

Reda Chouffani runs a consulting practice he co-founded, Biz Technology Solutions Inc., and is CTO at New Charter Technologies. He is a technology consultant with a focus on healthcare and manufacturing, cloud expert and business intelligence architect who helps enterprises make the best use of technology.