Copyright of generated work

Claimed authorship is an important academic concept, but it is not quite the same as copyright, which is the legal right to use a piece of work. There are questions about who owns the copyright to work generated by or with the help of GenAI tools. Any of us might read or look at copyrighted work and it could inspire us to create something new which has elements of those pieces. As long as we don’t copy the work exactly, which would be plagiarism, this approach is generally acceptable. In academic writing, we systematically cite the sources to show how our thinking has been influenced on particular points, to give credit to others, and to allow the reader to follow up for themselves. This doesn’t happen in other forms of writing such as newspaper articles, or fiction, although there may be some general acknowledgement of influences. There could be an argument to say that the GenAI tools are just doing this on a large scale, but that there is no significant difference that process and an individual doing the same thing. Government regulation will be needed to manage disputes in this area, but has not yet occurred. 

Current licence agreements (July 2024) usually say that you can use the output from GenAI tools for your own purposes. Check the licence if you are planning to sell or distribute outputs beyond academic work. 

Summary: we are waiting for changes to the law which will guide us in this area. For the moment, copyright is linked to claimed authorship.