This is a sidebar to Hachette Pulls Novel Due to AI Use
More than a year ago, the US Copyright Office released a report on AI and copyrightability that addresses whether people can claim copyright of materials they create using generative AI. The short answer is yes, to some extent. The USCO writes, “Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. … Human authors are entitled to copyright in their works of authorship that are perceptible in AI-generated outputs, as well as the creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of material in the outputs, or creative modifications of the outputs.”
For example, Elisa Shupe, a retired US Army veteran who wrote and self-published her novel with extensive assistance from ChatGPT, was granted limited copyright protection for her work by the US Copyright Office. Rather than recognize her as the author of the entire text, the Copyright Office considers Shupe the author of the “selection, coordination, and arrangement of text generated by artificial intelligence.” That means no one can copy the book without permission, but specific sentences or paragraphs themselves are not protected under copyright.
Using AI to research or to generate outlines or brainstorm does not have to be disclosed or disclaimed. Using AI for such purposes does not affect one’s copyright. Moreover, asking the AI to change your own work would not affect the underlying copyright. The Authors Guild has advised, “If you wrote a story, then put it into a chatbot and asked it to change two of the characters, you would still own the copyright in the original story and could prevent anyone from using all of the elements that carried over in the AI-revised story.” But any expression added by the AI would not be copyrightable. The big question: How does anyone determine what was added, aside from the author?
The Authors Guild admits, “Establishing as a factual matter whether any particular element of a work is AI generated … may present obstacles in infringement cases, making discovery even more laborious than it already is. For instance, an author may not remember which sentences, paragraphs, or elements were AI generated, or they may have died and not kept records. For now, there is no good human or mechanical way to distinguish human-authored from AI-generated text on a word-by-word or sentence-by-sentence basis. AI-generated stories give themselves away by their style, their odd narratives, and sometimes their nonsense, but it is not so obvious if a sentence here or there is AI generated.”
Some believe we’re in for a decade or more of uncertainty surrounding this issue—and lots of litigation to keep lawyers busy. I reported on this issue at length in February 2025. Read the full article.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
