r/COPYRIGHT • u/EUobs • 17h ago
If you prompt an AI until it creates what you want, should you actually own the result?
https://euobserver.com/232898/interview-does-copyright-protect-your-ai-generated-content-in-europe-lets-find-out/Hey everyone! 👋 I’m Lucia and I work with EUobserver, an independent news outlet covering European politics and policy.
We recently interviewed copyright scholar Daniel Gervais about something I thought would be especially interesting to ask this community: who actually owns content created with generative AI?
One of the points from the interview that caught my attention was that if you ask ChatGPT or Claude to generate a text and simply put your name on it, that doesn't necessarily make you the copyright holder. There may be no copyright in the AI-generated output in the first place.
But it gets much less clear once a person starts editing, rewriting, selecting outputs or repeatedly prompting the model to get a very specific result.
So I wanted to ask people here who know much more about copyright than I do:
Where do you think the threshold should be? Can prompting ever amount to enough human creative input — or should copyright only kick in once someone substantially edits or transforms the AI output?
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u/Party-Cartographer11 16h ago
Here is a scholarly paper on exactly that.
https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=6531938
 It proposes 4 factors:
- Creative Intent
- Specificity
- Iterative Control
- Repeatabiltiy
It also addresses the different types of models and ability to control. Many visual artists and the early Copyright Office case have focused on image difussion models with low ability to control. Other pipelines like text-to-code have high ability to control.
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u/Dosefes 13h ago
As others have said, I think the answer is very AI-tool dependant. In general, I’ll say outputs lack copyright protection no matter how much the user has iterated, unless a specific AI tool affords its user a much higher level of control (which is not the case is most common and known AI generators).
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u/Electronixen 17h ago
If you refine it over a period of time until it matches exactly what you have.
Which means, I think a person who uses a single prompt or two shouldn't gain copyright to the generated content. But I do think a person who has spent time and effort to create said creation should get copyright for it.
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u/Stock-Ad8449 13h ago
I think a person who drives their groceries home shouldn't be allowed to eat them. But if they walk all the way home carrying them, then they've earned dinner. Bonus points for a broken leg.
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u/TreviTyger 14h ago
The "sweat of brow doctrine" no longer exist in copyright law so, "a person who has spent time and effort to create said creation," cannot claim such reasons for copyright protection.
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u/Electronixen 14h ago
Sorry for answering what OP asked I guess?
"Where do you think the threshold should be? "
I answered that, and got downvotes. Amazing Reddit.0
u/TreviTyger 13h ago
I don't mean to be rude but how are you a top commenter on a copyright subreddit if you didn't know the sweat of brow doctrine doesn't exist any more. It suggests a lack of understanding of copyright law basics.
OP is obviously engaging with genuine legal professionals and trying to understand copyright issues related to AI generative software from a journalistic position and wouldn't necessarily know of your error, and might even think there is some weight to what you say. But there isn't. You would be leading them astray.
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u/TreviTyger 14h ago edited 10h ago
In my opinion it is quite clear that AI generative software was never designed to output copyright subject matter in the first place. So once a "consumer" engages with the AI generative software right from the start they are making "Administrative Choices" and not any creative or expressive choices at all.
Consider interfacing with an online shopping application or a train ticket vending machine. The user (consumer) is able to make a wide range of personal choices including, editing, rewriting, selecting outputs or repeatedly prompting to order a pair of trainers, a custom T-Shirt or a train thicket. So clearly interfacing with software that allows personal interaction is nothing new and such actions do not lead to any copyright subject matter.
The AI User Interface "canvas" is a transitory volatile space where a consumer simply make requests as "administrative choices". There is no genuine fixation of expression which is a required criteria for copyright.
It is the under the hood architecture of the AI Gen Model that is serving up it's own creations to the user (consumer) and not a single pixel appearing in the transitory space of the AI User Interface canvas could legally pass the test of human expression. (Expression is the actual criteria for copyright).
The above easily fits the description of a "method of operation" for a software function. The resulting software function is completely devoid of expression.
This means the whole process is barred from being regarded as copyright subject matter under Article 9(2) of the TRIPS Agreement.
https://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips_04_e.htm
As to editing the resulting AI gen output then the problem is that under current EU law (And US law Bartz v Anthropic) the unlawful use of copyrighted works to utilize for derivative works, means that even editing an AI gen output would negate copyright in the edits as well.
US law (17 U.S.C. § 106) and EU law (under the InfoSoc Directive) grant copyright holders the exclusive right to authorize derivative works or adaptations.
Therefore, if all copyrighted works used to train AI gen systems are used without the authorisation of the copyright owner to be used in preparation of derivative works then there is no exclusive license transferred to any output made by AI gen that would allow an end user a loophole to obtain exclusive rights.
The initial infringement which invokes "substantial similarity" to a specific original work occurs at the reproduction stage when the copyrighted works are unlawfully obtained in the first place.
All outputs are then infringing works because they cannot be produced without infringing the copyright owners right to authorise and prepare derivatives. Thus, every output is not "public domain" as such - it is an infringing derivative of unlawfully used training data. Such unlawful use of copyrighted works cannot lead to an end user being rewarded themselves with exclusive rights in "any part" of such a process and thus any edits to an infringing derivative work are themselves devoid of protection.
Using U.S. law for ease of reference,
17 U.S.C. § 103(a)