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RESEARCH GUIDES

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Scholarly Communications

This guide is intended to highlight the ways in which AI can be integrated into various aspects of the research and publishing process and what we should consider when deciding whether AI tools are the right fit for our individual practice

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Copyrightability of AI-Generated Works

Generative AI tools - like ChatGPT, Midjourney, GitHub Copilot - are capable of creating text, images, code, and other outputs that imitate the human-authored content. Are these AI-generated works copyrightable? Currently, under the interpretation of the US Copyright office and our laws, the answer is no. US copyright law defines copyrightable intellectual property as original works of authorship, which exist as soon as the author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression. Works are original when they are independently created by a human author and have a minimal degree of creativity. Since an AI tool is not a human author, objects created by them cannot be registered as copyright works and are exempt from copyright protections. 

All of this is important to understand because if you create materials using AI tools you will not have the same rights to these materials as you would with human-authored works. For instance

  • You will not be able to restrict the use or reuse of these works. 
  • These works cannot be registered with the US Copyright Office. Registration with the Copyright Office offers certain protections under federal law, such as the ability to defend your rights in federal court and receive certain financial remuneration for misuse of your work. 
  • You will not be able to sign over or transfer copyright ownership of the work to another party. This is important when you consider the need to attest to your ownership or to license or transfer copyright of the work to an institution or publisher 

Some parts of works incorporating AI-generated elements may be copyrightable. For instance, a book with AI-generated illustrations may not be registered/copyrightable in its entirety, and the illustrations will be excluded from copyright protection. However, the human-authored text would be copyrightable, and might be registered on its own. 

Lines around copyrightability are expected to shift based on legal rulemaking and evolving case law, as demonstrated by the two landmark cases below:

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