US Copyright Office Launches AI Initiative

The US Copyright Office has announced the launch of a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Initiative.

As the Office notes,

This initiative is in direct response to the recent striking advances in generative AI technologies and their rapidly growing use by individuals and businesses. The Copyright Office has received requests from Congress and members of the public, including creators and AI users, to examine the issues raised for copyright, and it is already receiving applications for registration of works including AI-generated content.

We wrote in this recent blog about how a comic book creator sought and initially received copyright registration for an 18-page comic book titled Zarya of the Dawn. After she posted on Instagram that the artwork had been created by an AI tool called Midjourney, and a reporter contacted the Copyright Office, the Office concluded that “the images in the Work that were generated by the Midjourney technology are not the product of human authorship” and thus not eligible for copyright protection.

The Copyright Office is issuing new registration guidance. This makes clear that copyright registration applicants must disclose the inclusion of AI-generated content in works submitted for registration.

The new guidance also provides details on how to make this disclosure, how to update pending applications, and how to correct the public record on copyright claims that have already been registered without the required disclosure.

Under the new Copyright Office policy,

applicants have a duty to disclose the inclusion of AI-generated content in a work submitted for registration and to provide a brief explanation of the human author’s contributions to the work.

They must use the Standard Application, and in it identify the author(s) and provide a brief statement in the “Author Created” field that describes the authorship that was contributed by a human. For example, an applicant who incorporates AI-generated text into a larger textual work should claim the portions of the textual work that is human-authored. And an applicant who creatively arranges the human and non-human content within a work should fill out the “Author Created” field to claim: “Selection, coordination, and arrangement of [human-authored content] created by the author and [AI content] generated by artificial intelligence.” Applicants should not list an AI technology or the company that provided it as an author or co-author simply because they used it when creating their work.

In the next few months, the Copyright Office plans to publish a notice of inquiry requesting public comments on copyright issues arising from the use of AI.

The Office also launched a new webpage for announcements, events, and resources related to AI and copyright at copyright.gov/ai.