Next Phase Report on Copyright and AI Now Available
NISO Member News
Washington, DC | January 29, 2025
Today, the Copyright Office released Part 2 of its #AI Report, “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence,” which addresses the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/w9RblFWpLl
— US Copyright Office (@CopyrightOffice) January 29, 2025
More Details Here
This Part of the Report addresses the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI. The Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology, as they have applied to technological innovations in the past. It concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts. The Office confirms that the use of AI to assist in the process of creation or the inclusion of AI-generated material in a larger human-generated work does not bar copyrightability. It also finds that the case has not been made for changes to existing law to provide additional protection for AI-generated outputs.
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The Report is being released in three Parts. Part 1 was published on July 31, 2024, and recommended federal legislation to respond to the unauthorized distribution of digital replicas that realistically but falsely depict an individual. The final, forthcoming Part 3 will address the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works, including licensing considerations and the allocation of any potential liability.
For more, see the full text of the U.S. Copyright Office announcement.
One Response to the Report
One relatively early response to the report appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.
The question boils down to whether AI, as the copyright office’s report characterized it, was used to “assist rather than stand in for human creativity.” The uncertainty has forced studios, production entities and distributors to navigate what they consider an overly rigid intellectual property scheme that doesn’t take into account the entertainment industry’s longtime use of AI tools in the production pipeline.
This remains unfamiliar ground for many.
The US Copyright Office is housed under the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is a Voting Member organization of NISO.