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Copyright & Intellectual Property

Services, policies and information about copyright at CSUN University Library

Can I Use Images & Text Generated by AI?

*AI generated materials do not currently receive copyright protections in the United States.  

*Use may be determined by the terms of use or terms and conditions of the GAI tool.

*If the terms of use do not address further uses of material generated by the GAI tool, then you are free to use the material.

*Some environments and publication arenas require full attribution for images and text that have been generated with AI.

Is Content Generated by AI Tools Copyrightable?

Currently, copyright protection is not granted to works created by AI. 

AI + Human Creativity

If you select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way, copyright will protect only the human-authored aspects of the work.

Example: Zarya of the Dawn (comic book with AI-generated images plus writing and arrangement by human author)

The U.S. Copyright Office determined that the selection and arrangement of the images IS copyrightable, but not the images themselves (made with generative AI)

Is Generative AI Stealing From Creators?

Some AI image and text generation tools have been trained on material scraped from web pages without the consent or knowledge of the web page owners.

Several law suits claim that the use of artists’ or writers' content, without permissions, to train generative AI is an infringement of copyright.

Decisions reached in three of these cases have not been conclusive, with outcomes depending largely on the unique facts of each case. See A Tale of Three Cases: How Fair Use is Playing Out in  AI Copyright

For more discussion see:

AI and Copyright Cases

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