The US Copyright Office has clarified its stance on the copyrightability of artificial intelligence-generated content, stating that output based purely on text prompts is not protected by current copyright law. This guidance, outlined in a broad report on policy issues regarding AI, marks a significant development in the ongoing debate surrounding AI-generated creative works.

The report concludes that existing copyright principles can apply without changes to the law, and these principles offer limited protection for many kinds of AI-generated works. The office emphasizes that AI systems themselves cannot hold copyrights, and users of an AI system are not considered authors of the output. This is true regardless of the complexity or detail of the prompt, as the final output reflects the user's acceptance of the AI system's interpretation rather than authorship of the expression it contains.

The decision has implications for works like "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial," a Midjourney-generated image that sparked controversy when its creator attempted to register it with the Copyright Office. The office demonstrates the unpredictability of AI systems using a Gemini-produced image of a cat smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper, noting that Gemini ignored some prompt instructions and added its own elements, including an "incongruous human hand."

In contrast, the report highlights the importance of human control in creative works, citing Jackson Pollock's splatter painting method as an example. The office argues that the degree of human control, rather than the predictability of the outcome, is the key factor in determining authorship. This means that human-created works with AI elements can still be copyrighted as a whole, as long as the author exercises sufficient control over the creative process.

The Copyright Office also clarifies that using AI to assist in human creative output does not necessarily jeopardize the work's ability to be protected by the law. There is a distinction between AI being used as a tool to assist a creative work and "AI as a stand-in for human creativity," and the office suggests that further analysis is warranted. However, it assures creatives that using AI to outline a book or come up with song ideas should not impact the ability to copyright the final human-produced work, since the author is simply "referencing, but not incorporating, the output."

Artists can also receive protection for works that incorporate AI-generated content, as long as there is significant creative modification. For example, a comic with AI-generated images can be covered if a human arranges those images and pairs them with human-written text, although the individual AI-generated images would not be protected. Similarly, "a film that includes AI-generated special effects or background artwork is copyrightable, even if the AI effects and artwork separately are not."

The office leaves open the possibility that this guidance may change if AI technology evolves to allow users to exert greater control over the output. However, as of now, it does not seem that prompts "adequately determine the expressive elements produced, or control how the system translates them into an output."

This report is part of a larger effort by the Copyright Office to clarify policy questions and identify legal gaps around AI. The office plans to issue a third and final report on its findings on "the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works." The ongoing debate surrounding AI-generated content and copyright law is likely to continue, with significant implications for creatives, policymakers, and the tech industry as a whole.