A New York-based artist received copyright registration on a comic featuring artwork by Midjourney, the first known US copyright for latent diffusion AI art
Registration of AI-assisted comic comes amid fierce online debate about AI art ethics. — In what might be a first … Tweets: @ccskeleton and @profjohanna Tweets: @ccskeleton : I hate this. They shouldn't allow a bot mangled image to be copyrighted by the human who didn't even drew any of it, just copy pasted it. The article vague about it but I'm guessing the well deserved copyright strike was for using a celebrity likeness ? https://arstechnica.com/... Prof Dr Johanna Gibson / @profjohanna : No surprises? The admin issue is ownership not authorship: “Despite popular misconception the US Copyright Off has not ruled against copyright on AI artworks ... it ruled out copyright reg'd to an AI as the author instead of a human” @arstechnica https://arstechnica.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This registration landed just months after the Copyright Office's rejection of a copyright for a purely AI-generated work on the ground that it lacked human authorship — so the examiner here treated the artist's comic as human-authored enough to register, making it the first known US copyright covering latent-diffusion output from Midjourney.
The grant proved short-lived: the Office later reversed its decision on the same comic book, and by 2023 had settled on a test under which AI-assisted works qualify only where the AI's contribution reflects the author's own mental conception — a standard a federal judge then upheld in August 2023. This article is the opening data point in that arc.
First-order effects
- The artist holds a presumptively valid registration on the comic, giving her the statutory enforcement lever — statutory damages and takedown posture — that unregistered AI-assisted work lacks.
- Midjourney users get a template: prompt-driven imagery embedded in a human-authored comic frame was deemed registrable, at least initially.
Second-order effects
- The Copyright Office is forced to draw the human-authorship line case by case, and its December reversal shows registrations of AI-assisted work are provisional until re-examined — a compliance risk for anyone commercializing similar output.
- Platforms and publishers of AI-assisted comics must now clear rights against a moving target, since a registration granted in September was stripped by December.
Third-order effects
- The pattern hardens into doctrine: human authorship as a bedrock requirement, judicially upheld, meaning purely AI-generated imagery defaults toward the public domain — which the related coverage argues may act as a counterweight to an increasingly restrictive US copyright system.
The trend: US copyright is converging on a human-conception test for AI-assisted art, with registrations of Midjourney-era work treated as revocable until the Office and courts finish drawing the line.