Artificial Intelligence

In 2023 the United States Copyright Office launched an initiative to examine copyright issues related to Artificial Intelligence. The report is split into three parts. The first part was published on July 31st 2024, the second on January 29th 2025, and the third part covers the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted materials was released as a pre-published version in May 2025, with a final version forthcoming. 

Part 1: Digital Replicas

• This part of the report covers existing laws around digital replicas. It finds that existing law is not able to effectively deal with the fast pace at which AI replicas are developing. It recommends new laws to properly regulate the use of digital replicas. 

Part 2: Copyrightability

• This part covers what sort of AI creations can be copyrighted. The report's findings are broadly summarized in 8 points

1. Questions of copyrightability and AI can be resolved pursuant to existing law, without the need for legislative change.
2. The use of AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the availability of copyright protection for the output.
3. Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author, even if the work also includes AI-generated material.
4. Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements.
5. Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
6. Based on the functioning of current generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control.
7. Human authors are entitled to copyright in their works of authorship that are perceptible in AI-generated outputs, as well as the creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of material in the outputs, or creative modifications of the outputs.
8. The case has not been made for additional copyright or sui generis protection for AI generated content.
    

Part 3: Generative AI Training 

• This part is especially concerned with whether or not the use of copyrighted works to train AI models falls under fair use.
• It concludes that there are various uses of copyrighted works that could be considered transformative (and therefore legal under fair use), but that ultimately, it will be a case by case basis to determine if specific instances fall within fair use.
• It encourages the growth of a market for licensed copyrighted materials that AI models can be trained on.

This presentation by UC Berkeley law professor Pamela Samuelson covers key copyright topics related to AI, including: the copyrightability of AI generated text and images, using copyrighted materials to train AI, and lawsuits about AI copyright.