Photo: iStock
By Brittany Fugate, CEO at Cenetric
To help SMB owners like you understand the ins and outs of AI, every month we’re talking about how to use it and what you need to know before you do.
(Missed the last one? Check out Using AI to Make Graphics for Your Business Presentations)
This month, we’re talking about copyright issues around AI.
The prospect of using AI in your business can be overwhelming, and it seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. It’s easy to feel like you’re behind if you’re not sure how to start using it in your work. It’s best to take it a step at a time and get familiar and comfortable with it before making a giant leap.
Many people start by playing around with ChatGPT to write or create images, and it can be a lot of fun. But if you want to protect what you create, it’s important to understand what you can and can’t do with AI.
Humans have to be the creators
The first thing to understand is that, generally, you can’t copyright something to which your only contribution was a prompt.
Let’s say you want to write a blog post like this one about what SMBs need to know about copyright. You can’t type in a quick prompt into an AI tool to generate the text, post it on your website and then expect to be protected by copyright. Copyright only protects humans, not AI outputs.
The U.S. copyright office published guidance on copyrightability in January 2025. It’s 52 pages, but here’s the long and short of it, right from the executive summary:
- “The use of AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the availability of copyright protection for the output.
- Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author. even if the work also includes AI-generated material.
- Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements.
- Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
- Based on the functioning of current generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control.”
Essentially, if you use AI to help you create works and materials for your company, you can most likely still hold the copyright, but prompting alone won’t cover you.
Photo: iStock
Why does this even matter to a small business?
As AI makes its way into more and more areas of our lives, it might be difficult to determine how much AI contribution is too much if you want to protect your company’s intellectual property.
Think about this situation: One of your employees builds a fantastic app that creates a new revenue opportunity for your company — but they built it entirely with AI using only prompts. You can’t protect it because prompting isn’t enough of a human input to secure a copyright. Your competitor can copy the app, and you won’t be able to stop it. And if they build it with a human programmer instead, they can copyright it and force you to stop using your version.
See where we’re going with this? It’s crucial for you to have an AI policy in place so you can always be sure you know how employees are using AI and whether your intellectual property really is protected.
Let Cenetric help you bring AI tools to your business
If you’ve got a great use case for AI but you’re not sure how to get started, the team at Cenetric can help you figure it all out. Some business owners are eager to bring AI into their business but don’t have a clear vision of how to go about it or what tools they should choose. Our experts can help analyze the situation and determine the right solution for your challenges.
Need a helping hand with your IT (AI or otherwise)? Cenetric has the experience and availability you need to stay running smoothly 24/7. Talk to us about your needs and we’ll be in touch quickly.