Can You Copyright AI Images?

Version 1.0

👨‍🏫 Introduction

You just made a hoax image with AI. Here's an uncomfortable question: which parts of it do you legally own? The U.S. Copyright Office answered this in its 2025 report Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability — using real works that real artists submitted for registration. This isn't hypothetical: it decides whether you could stop someone from selling t-shirts of your work.

ℹ️ This is education, not legal advice. Registration decisions are case-by-case; when it matters, ask a lawyer.

📌 Step 1: The rules in five lines

• 🧑 Copyright protects human expression only. No human authorship, no copyright.
• ⌨️ Prompts alone don't count. However clever, a prompt is an instruction, not authorship — you don't control what comes back.
• ✍️ Your hand survives. If your own drawing, photo, or composition is still clearly perceptible in the output, that part stays yours.
• 🧩 You own your changes. Selecting, arranging, editing, and compositing AI output can be protectable — the AI-generated parts still aren't.
• 🚫 Style isn't protected — characters are. Imitating an artist's style isn't infringement by itself; copying a protected character or work is.

🔍 Step 2: You be the Copyright Office

A real artist hand-drew a sketch, fed it to an AI with the prompt shown, and submitted the output for registration. Study the case below, then write down your ruling before revealing the real one:

1. Which elements of the output would you let her claim?
2. Which elements would you make her disclaim?

🔍 Reveal the Office's actual decision

⚖️ Step 3 (optional): Edge cases

In teams, answer two separate questions for each scenario: (1) Could the maker copyright the result? (2) Could the result infringe someone else's rights? They're independent — a work can be uncopyrightable and infringing. Commit to answers, then open the hint.

1. Prompting AI to generate an image of Super Mario driving a Cybertruck.
   Our reading

   Copyrightable: no — prompt-only. Infringing: very likely — Mario is a protected character (and Nintendo is famously litigious). Uncopyrightable and infringing at once.

2. Prompting AI to convert a scan of your own pencil drawing into a watercolor.
   Our reading

   Copyrightable: partly — like the rose case, whatever of your drawing remains clearly perceptible stays yours; the AI's watercolor rendering is disclaimed. Infringing: no — it was your drawing all along.

3. Prompting AI to redo your own watercolor in the style of a famous living illustrator [instructor names one you know].
   Our reading

   Copyrightable: your watercolor's perceptible elements, yes; the AI styling, no. Infringing: style alone isn't protected, so usually no — but selling it under that artist's name invites other legal trouble, and an ethics question copyright can't settle.

4. Generating a landscape by prompt, then spending an hour in Photopea compositing, repainting, and adding your own photographed sky.
   Our reading

   Copyrightable: your edits, arrangement, and photo — yes; the surviving AI parts — no. This is the “you own your changes” rule working in your favor. Infringing: no, absent copied source material.

5. Writing a 500-word prompt, regenerating 60 times, and submitting the best output untouched.
   Our reading

   Copyrightable: no — the Office says effort and iteration don't turn prompts into authorship, and picking a favorite isn't enough. Infringing: usually no, unless the output visibly copies a protected work. (Harsh? Many artists agree — that's the debate.)

6. Hand-tracing an AI-generated image onto paper and inking it yourself.
   Our reading

   Copyrightable: murky — your inking choices may add protectable expression, but a faithful trace of unowned AI output adds little that's “yours.” Infringing: nobody owns the AI original… which is why this one breaks intuitions. Argue it out.

📥 Post your team's most contested scenario and verdict to the class channel; add 🤯 to the scenario that most changed your mind.