Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others have fundamentally changed content creation. Caught up in this rapid change is the central question whether the use of GenAI infringes copyright or is fair use. More than a dozen lawsuits are pending in the USA and abroad including The New York Times versus Microsoft and Open AI, “permeated with significant legal and policy issues,” according to leading Toronto-based technology lawyer Barry Sookman.

Now, a GenAI copyright status update has been issued; see the link at the end of this article for the actual text from their published PDF.

A useful summary comes via Cassie Kozyrkov, Google‘s first Chief Decision Scientist and an AI expert with a LinkedIn following of 620K+.

? The use of AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the availability of copyright protection for the output.
? Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author, even if the work also includes AI-generated material.
? Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements.
? Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
? Based on the functioning of current generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control.