Writing With AI: Can You Copyright It?

Okay, so if you read my last post about Thaler v. Perlmutter (the AI ART case), you already know where this one's headed — but writing gets its own wrinkle, so let's talk about it.

Quick recap in case you missed it: in Thaler v. Perlmutter, where an AI system created art with zero human input, the courts said no — no copyright. In Allen v. Perlmutter, where the human was heavily involved in the process, the case is still pending. So even the "how much human involvement is enough" question isn't fully settled for art yet — but let's look at where things stand for writing specifically.

So... does that answer the writing question too? Sort of! Same bedrock rule applies — a human has to be the author, full stop. But here's where it gets more interesting for those of us who write books: the Copyright Office has actually weighed in more specifically on TEXT, and there's a real, useful line they've drawn.

Where they drew the line:

The Copyright Office has said flat out that if you use AI to generate whole paragraphs or sections and just... leave them as-is, you can't claim copyright on those specific passages. Typing a prompt and hitting go doesn't make you the author of what comes out — prompts are treated as instructions, not creative expression.

BUT — and this is the part where you should be really paying attention — that's not the same as saying "any AI involvement ruins everything." The Office's own guidance says this gets evaluated case-by-case, and AI-assisted work CAN be copyrighted when the human contribution is the thing actually shaping the expressive content. Not just tweaking a comma here or there — genuinely directing the words, the voice, the structure, the choices that make the writing yours.

So what does "sufficiently human" actually look like?

Honestly, this comes straight from the Copyright Office's own guidance on text — it's not about how many drafts you went through or how much back-and-forth happened. It's about who was steering the actual expression. If you're the one making the creative decisions — voice, plot, character, the specific words that end up on the page — that's authorship. If you're just accepting AI output wholesale with no real human shaping, that part isn't protectable.

There's no bright-line percentage, no magic number of edits that flips a switch. It really is judged case-by-case, which — I know, I know, "it depends" is the most lawyer answer possible. But that's genuinely where things stand right now.

The bottom line

Nothing here should freak out writers who use AI as part of their process (in whatever form that takes for you). The line the law is drawing isn't "no AI allowed," it's "a human still has to be the author" — same rule as the art case, just applied to sentences instead of pixels. As long as you're the one making the real creative choices, your work is still yours.

This is still a developing area of the law, so consider this the current snapshot, not the final word forever.

Resources:

• Garrett Ham: AI-assisted work can be copyrighted if the human shapes the expressive content — prompts alone aren't enough.

• Jane Friedman: Case-by-case guidance on AI-assisted vs. AI-generated text.

• The Authors Guild: What this actually means for authors and registration.

• U.S. Copyright Office: Straight from the source: the Copyright Office's own report.

• Copyright Alliance: A readable breakdown of the report's key takeaways.