It is important to remember that U.S. Copyright law as it relates to the use of AI tools is still evolving. On August 30, 2023, the U.S. Copyright Office issued a Notice of Inquiry on copyright and artificial intelligence to assess how it will advise Congress on the matter, and if any legislative or regulatory measures need to be taken.
Copyright law currently has a human authorship requirement, and according to recent guidance, when an AI technology "determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship." This means that AI-generated art and text is not copyrightable on its own.
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There are currently several court cases directly relating to the unauthorized use of copyrighted material as training data for Generative AI tools. Individual authors, artists, and companies are suing OpenAI, GitHub, and other companies for using their work when training their AI products.
Some text on this page was adapted from Artificial Intelligence (Generative) Resources © 2025 by Georgetown University Library, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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