{"id":3937,"date":"2025-01-30T02:48:36","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T02:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ai-generated-songs-cant-be-copyrighted-but-tools-fair-game-report\/"},"modified":"2025-01-30T02:48:36","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T02:48:36","slug":"ai-generated-songs-cant-be-copyrighted-but-tools-fair-game-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ai-generated-songs-cant-be-copyrighted-but-tools-fair-game-report\/","title":{"rendered":"AI-Generated Songs Can’t Be Copyrighted, But Tools Fair Game: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA new federal report on artificial intelligence says that merely prompting a computer to write a song isn\u2019t enough to secure a copyright on the resulting track \u2014 but that using AI as a \u201cbrainstorming tool\u201d or to assist in a recording studio would be fair game.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a long-awaited report issued Wednesday (Jan. 29), the U.S. Copyright Office reiterated the agency\u2019s basic stance on legal protections for AI-generated works: That only human authors are eligible for copyrights, but that material created with the assistance<\/em> of AI can qualify on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmid the surging growth of AI technology over the past two years, the question of copyright coverage for outputs has loomed large for the nascent industry, since works that aren\u2019t protected by copyrights would be far harder for their creators to monetize.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhere that [human] creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection,\u201d said Shira Perlmutter<\/strong>, Register of Copyrights, in the report. \u201cExtending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine, however, would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSimply using a written prompt to order an AI model to spit out an entire song or other work would fail that test, the Copyright Office said. The report directly quoted from a comment submitted by Universal Music Group, which likened that scenario to \u201csomeone who tells a musician friend to \u2018write me a pretty love song in a major key\u2019 and then falsely claims co-ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPrompts alone do not provide sufficient human control to make users of an AI system the authors of the output,\u201d the agency wrote. \u201cPrompts essentially function as instructions that convey unprotectible ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the agency also made clear that using AI to help create new works would not automatically void copyright protection \u2014 and that when AI \u201cfunctions as an assistive tool\u201d that helps a person express themselves, the final output would \u201cin many circumstances\u201d still be protected.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is an important distinction between using AI as a tool to assist in the creation of works and using AI as a stand-in for human creativity,\u201d the Office wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo make that point, the report cited specific examples that would likely be fair game, including Hollywood studios using AI-powered tech to \u201cde-age\u201d actors in movies. The report also said AI could be used as a \u201cbrainstorming tool,\u201d quoting from a Recording Academy submission that said artists are currently using AI to \u201cassist them in creating new music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn these cases, the user appears to be prompting a generative AI system and referencing, but not incorporating, the output in the development of her own work of authorship,\u201d the agency wrote. \u201cUsing AI in this way should not affect the copyrightability of the resulting human-authored work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWednesday\u2019s report, like previous statements from the Copyright Office on AI, offered broad guidance but avoided hard-and-fast rules. Songs and other works that use AI will require \u201ccase-by-case determinations,\u201d the agency said, as to whether they \u201creflect sufficient human contribution\u201d to merit copyright protection. The exact legal framework for deciding such cases was not laid out in the report.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new study on copyrightability is the second of three studies the agency is conducting on AI. The first report, issued last year, recommended federal legislation banning the use of AI to create fake replicas of real people; bills that would do so are pending before Congress.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe final report, set for release at some point in the future, deals with the biggest AI legal question of all: whether AI companies break the law when they \u201ctrain\u201d their models on vast quantities of copyrighted works. That question \u2014 which could implicate trillions of dollars in damages and exert a profound effect on future AI development \u2014 is already the subject of widespread litigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new federal report on artificial intelligence says that merely prompting a computer to write a song isn\u2019t enough to secure a copyright on the resulting track \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[442,587,2497,2822,1351,3790,140],"class_list":["post-3937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-aigenerated","tag-copyrighted","tag-fair","tag-game","tag-report","tag-songs","tag-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}