In plain English
- What happened
- The U.S. Copyright Office has stated that material generated purely by an AI system, without meaningful human creative input, does not qualify for copyright protection. A follow-up report in January 2025 reaffirmed that position while clarifying that human contributions layered on top of AI output can still be protected.
- Why it matters to your business
- A solopreneur who types a prompt into an AI video tool and posts the finished clip as a marketing video has, in the Office's view, produced something nobody can claim ownership of — a competitor could legally copy it. The parts that stay protected are the ones a person actually made: the script, the voiceover, the editing choices, the arrangement of clips.
- Do this
- Keep a record of what you personally wrote, recorded, edited or arranged in any AI-made video, since that's the part you could register and defend if it matters later.
No, not automatically. If a video comes out of an AI tool because you typed a prompt and accepted whatever it generated, the U.S. Copyright Office does not consider that a copyrightable work — anyone else is free to copy it. What can still be protected is the human work layered around or on top of it.
What the Copyright Office actually said
In March 2023, the Office issued formal guidance stating that copyright law protects works of human authorship, and that content an AI system produces on its own — without a person controlling the expressive choices — falls outside that protection. Anyone applying to register a work that includes AI-generated material has to disclose and disclaim the AI-generated parts on the application.
The Office followed up with a longer report in January 2025 focused specifically on the question of copyrightability. It confirmed the same core rule: purely AI-generated output isn't protected, but a human's selection, arrangement, or modification of that output can be, depending on how much creative judgment went into it.
Applications to register a copyrighted work must identify and disclaim any AI-generated material, per the Copyright Office's March 2023 policy.
What that means for a marketing video
Say a solopreneur generates a 30-second product video by typing a description into a text-to-video tool and using the first result. Under current guidance, that clip on its own has no copyright owner — a competitor who downloads and reposts it hasn't broken copyright law, whatever else might be true about brand confusion or trademark.
The calculation changes the moment a person adds their own creative work: writing the script, recording their own voice over it, choosing which AI-generated shots to keep and in what order, adding captions or a custom soundtrack. Those human contributions are the copyrightable layer, and the Office's guidance says that layer can be registered even when the underlying footage came from AI.
What still protects a business name or logo
None of this touches trademark law. A business name, logo, or slogan that appears in an AI-made video is protected the same way it always was, through trademark registration and use in commerce, regardless of how the video around it was produced.
- 1
Write your own script first
Draft the words and structure yourself before generating any footage. That script is a human-authored work you can register on its own, independent of the video.
- 2
Record your own voice or likeness
A voiceover, on-camera intro, or narration you perform yourself is squarely your creative work, unlike a fully synthetic voice or avatar.
- 3
Make deliberate editing choices
Choosing which AI-generated clips to use, trimming them, and putting them in a specific order is the kind of human judgment the Office says can be protected.
- 4
Keep records as you go
Save your prompts, drafts, and edit history. If you ever need to show what part of a video was your own work, that trail is the evidence.
- 5
Disclose AI content if you register the work
If a video is ever submitted for copyright registration, the AI-generated portions need to be identified and disclaimed on the application, per current Copyright Office rules.
Reality check
Adding a title card that says 'created with AI' doesn't change the copyright analysis one way or the other — protection turns on how much human creative judgment shaped the final work, not on whether AI use is disclosed.
None of this stops anyone from using AI to make videos faster and cheaper than hiring a videographer. It just means the finished clip, by itself, isn't automatically something a business can stop others from copying — the human work built around it is what carries that protection.
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