Unit VI · People and rules
Who owns what the AI wrote
Two separate questions: whether anyone can hold copyright in AI output, and what the tool's terms and any open-source licences ask of you.
Copyright needs a human author
In January 2025 the US Copyright Office published Part 2 of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence. It concluded that AI output is protected only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements, and that prompts alone do not give enough control. Human contributions, such as selecting, arranging or changing the output, can be protected.
The tool's terms
Rights between you and an AI provider are set by the provider's terms of service, which differ between tools and plans and change over time. Read the current terms of the tools you use, especially on who may use your inputs and outputs.
Open-source licences travel with code
If code from an open-source project ends up in your app, its licence comes with it. The MIT licence lets you reuse code as long as its copyright and permission notice are kept. The GNU GPL asks that, if you distribute a program built from GPL code, you make the whole program's source available under the GPL.
Words to know
- Copyright
- legal protection for original works of authorship
- Human authorship
- the Copyright Office's requirement for protection
- Terms of service
- the contract between you and a tool's provider
- Open-source licence
- the permission and conditions attached to shared code
Sources
- U.S. Copyright Office: Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (January 2025)
- Open Source Initiative: The MIT License
- GNU: Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses
Checked October 17, 2026. Pages on other sites change; if a source no longer says what the lesson says, the source wins.