What should you check about AI and copyright?

AI and copyright raise two separate sets of questions: what you put into an AI tool, and what you do with what comes out. On the input side, the issue is other people’s content and your licence to use it. On the output side, it is whether the result is protected and whether it resembles an existing work.

Hypothetical example: an agency uploads a photographer’s image to an AI tool and asks for a version “in the same style” for a campaign. Its licence covers one website banner, not new derivative images, and the result looks very close to the original. Nobody checked either point.

The input side: content you feed in

Recommendation. Treat content in a prompt like content in any other piece of work. Before uploading someone else’s text, image, music or code, check that your licence covers this use.

Legal requirement (Directive (EU) 2019/790, Art. 4). EU copyright law allows text and data mining of lawfully accessible content, but rightsholders can opt out by expressly reserving their rights, for content online in a suitable way such as machine-readable form (Directive (EU) 2019/790, Art. 4). If your company publishes content, you can use this opt-out yourself.

Legal requirement (EU AI Act, Art. 53). Providers of general-purpose AI (GPAI) models must have a policy to comply with EU copyright law, including respecting these opt-outs (AI Act, Art. 53). This has applied since 2 August 2025; models placed on the market before that date must comply by 2 August 2027. The duty falls on the model provider, not on a company using a tool built on the model, but it is a fair question for the vendor. The full timeline is in what the EU AI Act requires.

The output side: what you get back

Whether AI output is protected by copyright has no universal answer; it depends on the jurisdiction. In the United States, for example, the US Copyright Office concluded in January 2025 that prompts alone do not provide sufficient human authorship, while protection can cover a person’s sufficient expressive contribution, such as creative selection, arrangement or modification of the output (US Copyright Office, Copyright and AI, Part 2). That analysis cannot be transferred automatically to other jurisdictions. So do not assume either that your company owns the output or that anyone may freely copy it.

Output can also collide with other people’s rights, and these are different questions:

• Copyright protects works such as text, images, music and code.
• Trademarks protect brand names and logos.
• Image and personality rights protect people’s faces and voices.

A result can be clear on one of these and still raise another.

What the vendor’s terms say

Look for two things, and add them to your questions to ask an AI vendor:

• Output rights. Who holds any rights in the output as between you and the vendor, and whether commercial use is allowed on your plan.
• Indemnity. Whether the vendor will defend you if a third party claims the output infringes their rights, and on what conditions, which are often limited to business plans or to use with filters switched on.

An AI and copyright check before publishing

Recommendation. Before AI-generated text, images or code are published or delivered to a client, the person responsible answers these questions:

1. Did anyone put third-party content into the prompt, and does the licence cover that use?
2. Does the output resemble an existing work, a brand or logo, or a real person’s face or voice? A reverse image search or a plagiarism check gives extra signals; neither is permission to publish.
3. For code: do the licences of any matching code allow this use, and do they require attribution?
4. Has a person reviewed and edited the output, and is that recorded? A record documents your contribution; it does not guarantee that rights arise.
5. Do the vendor’s terms allow this commercial use on your plan?
6. Does the content need an AI label? See what AI transparency requires.
7. Is there a record of the tool, the date and who approved publication?

If any answer is unclear, hold the content until it is resolved. The check fits naturally into your AI use policy.

Next step: open the contract or terms for your main AI content tool and write down what it says about output rights and indemnity.

Sources and further reading

• Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright in the Digital Single Market — Article 4
• Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act) — Article 53
• US Copyright Office — Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability