Copyright Status and Ownership of AI-Generated Text

Determine whether text produced by large language models is protected by copyright and identify the rightful owner of such copyright, if any.

Background

Beyond the legality of training data, the authors note uncertainty regarding the copyright status of outputs generated by LLMs. Some platform terms assign ownership to users, but this may not resolve the underlying legal status of AI-generated text.

Establishing clear legal guidance on whether AI-generated outputs are copyrightable—and who owns them—has practical consequences for scientific writing, licensing, attribution, and reuse.