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ARTICLE · 15 APRIL 2025

Copyrightability Of AI Generated Works

Thompson Coburn LLP
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The Copyright Office recently released part two of a three part report on the legal and policy issues related to copyright and artificial intelligence.

United StatesIntellectual Property
Brendan Bement
Brendan Bement
Steven Heinrich
Steven Heinrich
Sylvia Turner
Sylvia Turner
Alex Weidner
Alex Weidner
Justin P. Mulligan
Justin P. Mulligan
Sartouk Moussavi
Sartouk Moussavi
Shoko Naruo
Shoko Naruo
Michael Parks
Michael Parks
Thomas Polcyn
Thomas Polcyn
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The Copyright Office recently released part two of a three part report on the legal and policy issues related to copyright and artificial intelligence.1 This second part addressed the copyrightability of works created using Generative AI.2

There are two fundamental requirements of copyright protection especially relevant to copyright protection over works that have elements created by Generative AI: (1) the requirement of human authorship and (2) copyright law does not protect ideas but rather protects the author's expression of those ideas. Human authorship does not mean someone cannot use the help of a machine, but copyright protection requires sufficient human-authored expressive elements. For example, a photographer can obtain copyright protection for a photograph based upon the photographer's creative contributions such as how the subject is posed and the choice and placement of accessories. An example of the idea/expression dichotomy is that the person who

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