Under United States copyright law machine generated content, like Artificial Intelligence (AI) outcomes, do not carry copyright. This was recently upheld with a Federal Court Ruling from Judge Beryl A. Howell in August of 2023 (Civil Action No. 22-1564 Thaler v Perlmutter and US Copyright Office). The ruling states that a work must have a human creator in order to qualify for copyright. In reaction and recognition of this emerging trend, the US Copyright Office is actively studying the issue and plans to issue a report later in 2024 to summarize community input and their findings.
While machine generated content cannot be copyrighted, there remains the potential issue of copyright infringement from using AI/machine generated content that has been produced on copyrighted content. At this time there is a debate on whether a work generated through one of these models would be subject to copyright, or if they will be determined to be a large language model developed under fair use. As an example of this being debated, in September of 2023 a Delaware Judge ruled that a landmark case, Thompson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence, must go to a jury trial, which should begin sometime in 2024.
Policy retrieved from FLVC Copyright Education and Information libguide
Florida Institutions of Higher Education require compliance with copyright law and, when appropriate, supports the exercise in good faith of full copyright exemption rights by faculty, staff, and students. Specifically, Florida Institutions of Higher Education:
Policy retrieved from FLVC Copyright Education and Information libguide