Officially, U.S Copyright Office Rejects AI-Generated Content. Unofficially ...

The U.S. Copyright has quietly been accepting hundreds of applications for registration of content created by artificial intelligence even though they repeatedly have declared that Office 'policy" is just the opposite.

The U.S. Copyright Office has quietly granted copyright protection to over 1,000 AI-enhanced works—but with a catch: not all AI-generated content is treated equally under the law. As Assistant General Counsel Jalyce Mangum explained to Wipo Magazine, the office makes a clear distinction between using AI as a tool to assist human creativity versus letting AI do all the expressive heavy lifting. So, your ChatGPT-generated meme isn’t likely to get a copyright stamp, but if AI helps you express something you couldn’t otherwise—say, reviving a lost singing voice like country star Randy Travis’s—then you’re in luck.

The line between acceptable assistance and unacceptable automation is a blurry one. For instance, a fully AI-generated movie received copyright protection in South Korea—not because the AI was brilliant, but because a human arranged and curated the AI outputs. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., AI-generated songs are already hitting the mainstream. Producer Metro Boomin recently released a track that includes samples from Udio, an AI music generator, which soared to millions of streams—despite Udio now being sued by the RIAA.

While some artists welcome the legal validation of AI-assisted work, others remain skeptical or outright hostile. Paul McCartney, despite having used AI to resurrect John Lennon’s voice for a track, has warned that AI could "rip off" future generations of musicians. And a wave of lawsuits from creatives across various fields—writing, photography, music—signals that the debate over authorship in the AI age is far from settled.

For more, see the original article on PC Mag here.