The US Copyright Office has updated its guidelines:
If AI content is present, the Office will only register the work if the human contributions are sufficiently creative and if the AI-generated portions are supplementary or used as a tool under human direction. Essentially, they ask: “Is the work basically one of human authorship, with the computer merely assisting?” If yes, it can be protected (with a disclaimer that some content isn’t human-made). If no, if the AI’s role overshadows the human’s, then the work, or at least the AI-created portion, is not eligible for copyright.
In Canada, where I live:
So, can you claim copyright in an AI-generated work in Canada? As of 2025, the safest answer is: only if a human author contributed substantial creative effort to the final work. There needs to be some human “skill and judgment” or creative spark for a work to be protected.
If the AI was just a tool in your hands, for instance, you used AI to enhance or assemble content that you guided then your contributions are protected and you are the author of the overall work. But if an AI truly created the material with you providing little more than a prompt or idea, the law may treat that output as having no human author, and thus no copyright.
For now, anyone using AI in creative projects should keep documentation of their own input and creative choices. Emphasize the parts of the work where you exercised judgment or selected elements because those are likely what copyright will cover. And remember that copyright in AI-generated content is a fast-moving area.
https://www.foundationsoflaw.com/post/can-you-claim-copyright-in-ai-generated-works-in-canada
Makes sense to me.
Prompting the AI alone does not meet that requirement. IE you can’t say “draw me a picture of a cat” and then copyright the picture of the cat claiming you made it.
You can say “help me draw this left ear over here, now make the right ear up here, a little taller, darken the edges a bit”, all with prompts, but with your sufficient creative input.