Map the human contribution
Preserve drafts and identify what a person actually wrote, drew, selected, arranged, revised, or transformed. Prompts may be relevant evidence, but prompts alone do not automatically establish authorship of every generated output.
Prepare a candid application record
An application should describe the human-authored contribution and disclaim more-than-de-minimis AI-generated material when required by Copyright Office guidance. Previously filed registrations with omitted AI information may require corrective analysis.
Ownership and platform terms
- Confirm who made the human contribution and whether a written assignment exists.
- Review AI-platform terms, training-data restrictions, output licenses, confidentiality, and indemnity.
- Preserve model, version, prompts, outputs, edits, dates, and source files.
- Assess third-party infringement risk separately from registrability of the user’s own contribution.
Frequently asked questions
Does editing an AI image create copyright?
Human revisions may be protectable if they reflect sufficient original authorship, but the conclusion depends on what was actually changed and what remains machine generated.
Can prompts be registered?
Original prompt text may itself be evaluated as literary authorship, but that does not automatically make the generated output human-authored.