The US Copyright Office holds that copyright protects only human authorship, so AI-generated images get none of it, while the prompts themselves can be copyrighted and the paperwork is quietly returning.
The US Copyright Office has taken a clear side: copyright protects only human authorship, so a monkey's selfie does not qualify and neither does an AI-generated image. The prompt itself can be copyrighted, as long as it carries some spark of creativity.
The absurd consequence: spend a month refining a prompt and burn 200,000 gallons of diesel, and the resulting image is in the public domain for anyone to take. Companies that want to protect their commercial interests will have to log every word and pixel, tracking what the AI produced and what humans edited, much like the old copyright registration forms.
After a long detour, the formalities that the Berne Convention abolished are being reinvented as internal corporate process.
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