AI tools make it fast to draft an ebook, generate cover art or produce a set of worksheets. They also raise a question that matters a lot for anyone selling digital products, and even more for anyone selling PLR: who actually owns what the AI made, and can you stop other people from copying it?
This guide pulls together what the US Copyright Office, the courts and the major AI vendors have said, as of October 2026. It’s general information, not legal advice. If a lot of money rides on a specific product, talk to an intellectual property attorney.
The short version
- US copyright protects human authorship. Material generated entirely by AI isn’t protected, according to the Copyright Office.
- Using AI as an assistant doesn’t cost you protection for the parts you created yourself.
- Prompts alone, under current technology, aren’t enough to make you the author of the output, in the Office’s view.
- AI vendors’ terms may say you “own” the output, but that’s a contract with the vendor. It doesn’t create a copyright the law doesn’t recognize.
- Amazon KDP requires you to disclose AI-generated text, images and translations, but not AI-assisted content.
What the Copyright Office says
The 2023 registration guidance
In March 2023, the Copyright Office published guidance in the Federal Register on registering works that contain AI-generated material. It says applicants have a duty to disclose AI-generated content, and that AI material that is more than minimal should be explicitly excluded from the claim.
In practice, that means using the Standard Application, describing your own contribution (for example, the text you wrote) and listing the AI-generated material under the excluded material. You should never name an AI tool as an author. The Office warns that failing to disclose can lead to a registration being canceled or disregarded in court.
Zarya of the Dawn
The best-known early example is the comic book Zarya of the Dawn. In February 2023, the Office decided that the author’s text, and her selection and arrangement of text and images, were protected. The individual images made with Midjourney were not. The Office’s reasoning was that prompts worked more like suggestions than instructions, and that the tool produced images in ways the user couldn’t predict. Time and effort spent prompting didn’t change that.
The decision also noted that very minor edits to an AI image were too small to count as authorship, while more substantial edits could be protected.
The 2025 Copyrightability report
In January 2025, the Office released Part 2 of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence, focused on copyrightability. Its main conclusions:
- Existing law is adequate, and no new legislation is needed for now.
- Using AI to assist human creativity, rather than replace it, doesn’t affect protection.
- Copyright still protects the human-authored expression in a work that also contains AI material.
- Purely AI-generated material, or material where a human lacks enough control over the expressive elements, isn’t protected.
- Prompts alone don’t currently provide enough control.
- Human authors can claim their own work that is visible in AI output, their creative selection and arrangement, and their creative modifications of the output.
The Office said each case is decided on its facts and promised further registration guidance. As of October 2026, we couldn’t find that updated guidance on the Office’s AI page.
What the courts have said
In Thaler v. Perlmutter, the D.C. Circuit ruled in March 2025 that human authorship is required for copyright registration. The case involved artwork that the applicant listed as created by an AI system on its own. The court didn’t decide how much human involvement is enough when a person uses AI as a tool. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on March 2, 2026, so the appeals court ruling stands.
A separate case, Allen v. Perlmutter in federal court in Colorado, asks whether an artist who used hundreds of Midjourney prompts and later edited the result can be the author. Legal trackers described it as still pending in spring 2026. A ruling there could shed more light on prompt-driven work, so it’s worth watching.
What AI vendors’ terms say
Most major tools address ownership in their terms. Two examples:
- OpenAI. Its terms of use say that, between you and OpenAI and to the extent the law allows, you own the output and OpenAI assigns you any rights it has in it. The same terms note that output may not be unique, so other users may get similar results. They also prohibit presenting AI output as human-generated when it wasn’t.
- Midjourney. Its terms say you own the images you create to the fullest extent the law allows. A company (or an employee of one) with more than $1 million in annual revenue must be on a Pro or Mega plan to own its images. Users also give Midjourney a broad license to what they create, and images are publicly viewable by default.
The key point: these terms settle things between you and the vendor. They can’t give you a copyright that US law says doesn’t exist. If an image is purely AI-generated, owning it under Midjourney’s terms doesn’t let you stop someone else from copying it.
Amazon KDP’s AI disclosure rules
If you publish ebooks or low-content books on Amazon, KDP’s content guidelines draw a clear line:
- AI-generated content was created by an AI tool, even if you edited it substantially afterward. This includes cover and interior images. You must disclose it when you publish or republish.
- AI-assisted content is material you created yourself and then edited, refined or error-checked with AI, or ideas you brainstormed with AI. You don’t have to disclose it.
Either way, KDP holds you responsible for making sure the content follows its guidelines, including intellectual property rights.
What this means for PLR and digital product sellers
If you sell PLR you made with AI
Purely AI-generated text or images likely have no copyright protection in the US. That has two consequences. First, your license terms may be hard to enforce against someone who copies the content without buying it. Second, buyers may assume they’re getting protected, original material. Be honest about how the content was made, and avoid describing it as “100% human-written” if it isn’t.
If you buy PLR
Ask the seller whether AI was used and how. If you plan to publish on KDP, you’ll need that information to answer Amazon’s disclosure question accurately. AI-generated PLR you publish as-is would likely count as AI-generated content, even if you change it.
How to build something you can protect
The Copyright Office’s position points to a practical approach: the more of the creative expression that comes from you, the more you can protect.
- Write or substantially rewrite the text yourself, using AI for outlines, research prompts or proofreading.
- Make meaningful creative edits to AI images, not small touch-ups.
- Put real thought into how you select and arrange material, since that arrangement can be protected even when some pieces can’t.
- Keep drafts, prompts and version history, so you can show what you contributed.
- If you register a copyright, disclose and exclude the AI-generated parts as the 2023 guidance describes.
Keep an eye on what changes
This area is still developing. The Copyright Office has said more guidance is coming, cases like Allen v. Perlmutter are working through the courts, and vendors update their terms regularly. Check the original sources below before you make decisions about a product line, and revisit them every few months.
Sources
- Federal Register: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence
- U.S. Copyright Office: Zarya of the Dawn decision letter
- U.S. Copyright Office: Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability
- U.S. Copyright Office: Copyright Office Releases Part 2 of Artificial Intelligence Report
- U.S. Copyright Office: Copyright and Artificial Intelligence
- Goodwin: DC Circuit Holds That AI Cannot Be an Author Under Copyright Law
- SCOTUSblog: Thaler v. Perlmutter
- National Constitution Center: Supreme Court denies artificial intelligence authorship claim for artwork copyright
- McBrayer: Intellectual property case tracker, Allen v. Perlmutter
- OpenAI: Terms of Use
- Midjourney: Terms of Service
- Amazon KDP: Content Guidelines
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