US Copyright Office, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2 (January 2025): prompts alone do not make the user an author (U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (January 2025), section II.D.2 (Prompts: Analysis))
Writing the prompt does not make a person the author of what the model returned. A holder cannot claim copyright in model text just because its staff asked for it.
Dated 30 Oct 2026Source checked 30 Oct 2026Basis: primary text
In the source's own words
“The Office concludes that, given current generally available technology, prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control to make users of an AI system the authors of the output.”
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