New Guidance: Human Authorship Required for AI-Generated Copyrights

U.S. guidance and court rulings reaffirm that only works with proven human authorship are copyrightable.

As generative AI tools become ubiquitous, the boundaries of intellectual property ownership have come under scrutiny. Recent U.S. Copyright Office guidance and federal court decisions have underscored a clear principle: only works with significant human innovation behind them are eligible for copyright.

• In March 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Thaler v. Perlmutter affirmed that the Copyright Act demands human authorship, denying protection for creations generated solely by AI without human input (analysis).
• The U.S. Copyright Office’s 2023 policy guidance is direct: works produced entirely by AI, absent 'sufficient human creative control,' do not qualify for protection. Merely crafting prompts is not enough to claim authorship (Jones Day).
• Applicants must now disclose AI-generated content in registration applications and explicitly describe the human contributions involved (terms.law FAQ).
• These requirements were illustrated in the 'Zarya of the Dawn' case, where copyright was only granted to the human-authored text and arrangement, not the AI-generated images themselves.

Citing the D.C. District Court: “Copyright has never stretched so far, however, as to protect works generated by new forms of technology operating absent any guiding human hand.” Documenting human intervention in the creative process has become an essential step for rights holders.

Yes, but: There is still ambiguity about what level of human creative control is 'sufficient' to secure copyright, leaving room for future disputes.