Can you copyright AI art? And what to protect instead

This page summarizes what the U.S. Copyright Office has published. It isn’t legal advice, and outcomes depend on how a specific work was made.

What the Copyright Office says

Copyright in the U.S. requires a human author. In its January 2025 report on copyrightability, the Copyright Office said copyright doesn’t extend to purely AI-generated material, or to material where a human didn’t control the expressive elements. It said prompts alone generally aren’t enough, even detailed ones.

In March 2026 the Supreme Court declined to hear Thaler v. Perlmutter, leaving in place the appeals court ruling that a work needs a human author to be registered.

What can still be yours

The same report says human contributions can be protected:

• Your own art in the output. If you drew or made something and it shows up in the result, your part can count.
• Creative selection and arrangement. Choosing and arranging images or other material in a creative way can be protected as a compilation, even when the individual images aren’t.
• Real edits. Changes you make by hand that are creative enough on their own.

A well-known example is the comic Zarya of the Dawn. The Copyright Office decided the author’s text and her selection and arrangement of the images were protected, but the Midjourney-generated images themselves weren’t.

If you register, you disclose

The Copyright Office’s registration guidance says applicants have to disclose AI-generated material that’s more than minimal, and claim only the human-authored parts. Leaving it out can put a registration at risk.

What this means for an AI character

For a character made mostly with prompts, the face itself may have little or no copyright protection. Someone generating a similar-looking character may be hard to stop on copyright grounds. That’s a common surprise.

The name is a different story. A trademark protects a name or mark used in commerce to show who’s behind something, like the channel your character runs. It doesn’t depend on who drew the face. The fuller comparison is in AI character copyright vs. trademark, and whether an AI-made character can carry a trademark is in can you trademark an AI-generated character?

What to protect instead, practically

1. Keep your working files. Drafts, sketches, edits, and notes on what you did by hand. If you ever claim copyright in your part, that’s the record.
2. Save your generator’s terms. A dated copy of the commercial-use terms when you made the character. Ownership between you and the tool is a separate question from copyright.
3. Build the name. Use one distinctive name everywhere and put it on the channel profile.
4. Check the name. The free check searches live USPTO records for the same name, names that contain it, and close spellings, and says File now, Intent to use, or Do not file yet.
5. If it’s ready, CharacterGuard’s Lock kit ($249 once) gets the name, mark, and channel record ready for an attorney. It isn’t a filing, and we don’t file. The USPTO fee ($350 per class) and any attorney’s fee are separate. CharacterGuard isn’t a law firm.
6. Watch for copies. PromptPatrol ($39/month) watches new USPTO filings each week for your character’s name, names that contain it, and close spellings. With face watch on, it also compares your character’s face with YouTube channel images and TikTok profiles at exact and close-spelling handles. A lookalike isn’t proof of copying, and you file any reports yourself.

Sources

• U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (January 2025).
• U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence (March 2023).
• U.S. Copyright Office, letter on Zarya of the Dawn (February 2023).
• Thaler v. Perlmutter, petition for certiorari denied (SCOTUSblog case page).