The US Copyright Office rules that a comic book made using AI art is ineligible for copyright protection, reversing a September 2022 decision
Reversing an earlier decision, the United States Copyright Office rules that a comic book made using A.I. art is ineligible for copyright protection Tweets: @dezziearts , @rstephens , @trumwill , and @b4olivas See also Mediagazer Tweets: Michelle / @dezziearts : Well now, that throws a big ole wrench in the commercial viability of AI-generated art. https://www.cbr.com/... Robert Stephens / @rstephens : I would imagine you could at least copyright the text prompt itself. https://twitter.com/... Will Truman / @trumwill : Hmmm would make sense for the art within to not be protected but the story and sequence should be. https://www.cbr.com/... Ben Formaker-Olivas / @b4olivas : A huge win in the fight against people using AI generated images to profit off of stolen art “...the copyright protection on the comic book will be revoked, stating that copyrighted works must be created by humans to gain official copyright protection.” https://www.cbr.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
In September 2022, a New York-based artist received what was reported as [[a:983216|the first known US copyright registration on a comic featuring Midjourney latent-diffusion artwork]] — a signal that AI-assisted work could be protected like any other. This reversal unwinds that precedent: the Copyright Office now holds the comic's AI-generated imagery fails the authorship test, and the office doubled down months later by telling a graphic novelist its Midjourney images should never have been registered.
The stakes go beyond one comic. The office's position hardened through 2023 — a district court judge upheld the finding that 'human authorship is a bedrock requirement', and a separate denial covered an image even after Photoshop alterations and hundreds of prompt revisions.
First-order effects
- The comic's owner loses the exclusive rights granted in September: the AI-generated images enter the public domain, so any publisher or competitor can reproduce them without license or recourse.
- Creators registering AI-assisted works must now segregate human-authored elements — text, story, arrangement — from generated imagery, since the latter alone cannot anchor a claim.
Second-order effects
- Commercial buyers of AI art lose the exclusivity premium: work that looks identical to copyrighted illustration carries no enforcement backstop, pressuring marketplaces and studios that priced AI output as an asset.
- AI toolmakers face demand for provenance and workflow features that document human contribution, because a purely prompted pipeline produces nothing registrable.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — court affirmation of the human-authorship doctrine plus denials even after extensive prompting — US copyright settles into a two-tier regime where only human-created layers are property, reshaping how studios structure AI-assisted production.
- Registration strategy shifts toward hybrid authorship records, pushing disputes over AI output toward contract and licensing rather than copyright enforcement.
The trend: US copyright law is consolidating around human authorship as the bright line for AI-assisted creative work, with the Copyright Office and courts converging on the same standard.