MEPX
Chapter 8 of 10All chapters
  1. 1What generative means
  2. 2Text generation
  3. 3Images and other media
  4. 4Working with these tools
  5. 5What to expect it to get wrong
  6. 6Customising a model
  7. 7Tools and agents
  8. 8Copyright and licensing
  9. 9Provenance and trust
  10. 10Using it well at work

Chapter 8 of 10

Copyright and licensing

Genuinely unsettled.

Two questions

Whether training on copyrighted material is permitted, and who owns the output. Both are being litigated, and answers differ by jurisdiction and keep moving.

  • Several courts have held purely machine-generated work lacks human authorship.
  • Provider terms usually assign output rights to the user, subject to law.

Practical caution

For anything commercial, check the provider terms, keep a record of what was generated, and add meaningful human authorship. Treat confident legal claims about this area, including summaries like this one, as provisional.