Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) intersects with copyright with regard to what is uploaded into the AI tool and the content that is generated by the AI. The United States Copyright Office's Copyright and Artificial Intelligence website reviews current and pending information about this issue.

Copyright and AI Input:

Copyrighted materials should never be uploaded into AI tools or used in an AI tool such as ChatGPT. Most AI tools will use any information to train their models, and the author will have no recourse to reclaim their intellectual property (even text you delete will be retained by the tool). Carefully consider any content you use with an AI tool to ensure that you own it. Avoid adding personal information about yourself or someone else or proprietary information about Messiah University. This private information could show up in someone else's results. For more information about copyright, privacy, and security and AI, visit Murray Library's AI guide.

Copyright and AI Output:

A January 2025 report from the U. S. Copyright Office addresses the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI.

The report notes: "Outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts."

The Copyright Office also released Copyright Registration Guidance for Works Containing AI-Generated Materials.