The New Creative Frontier

Artificial Intelligence has begun to reshape creativity. What previously required hours of writing, designing, coding, or composing can now be achieved by typing a simple prompt into a machine. Images, music, videos, and even legal documents can be produced on command. Tools once limited to science fiction now enable individuals and businesses to turn imagination into reality — instantly.

However, while technology evolves at an astonishing pace, the law does not. Copyright laws around the world were built on the assumption that only humans could create. When a machine becomes the author of a creative output, traditional legal principles begin to strain, raising critical questions about ownership:

If AI generates content, who owns it?

The user? The software developer? Or no one at all?

This debate sits at the intersection of law, technology, and creativity, challenging long-standing assumptions about originality and intellectual property.

Copyright and the Human Requirement

Copyright law has historically been straightforward: the person who creates a work, an author — owns it. Once a work is fixed in a tangible medium, copyright automatically arises, giving the author exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, adapt, translate or publicly perform the work. Certain exceptions exist, such as work for hire, where employers or commissioners own the rights to employee-created works.

Yet one foundational rule underpins copyright law globally:

Copyright protection requires human authorship.

This requirement becomes problematic when a creative work is produced without direct human involvement, as may occur with generative AI.

Nigeria’s Position

Nigeria’s Copyright Act 2022 places human creativity at the center of protection. A work qualifies for copyright only if it:

1.Is original,

2.Is fixed in a tangible form, and

3.Originates from a human author.

The Act does not recognize AI as a legal “author” or a rights-bearing entity. Therefore, where AI independently generates a work without meaningful human contribution, the work may fall outside copyright protection. However, if a human provides prompts, selects outputs, edits results, or makes creative decisions during the process, that human contribution may establish copyright.

Nigeria’s approach aligns with the emerging international position that AI may be the tool, but humans remain the authors.

The United States: Firm on Human Authorship

The United States maintains a clear stance. The U.S. Copyright Office has consistently refused protection for works generated without human involvement. In Thaler v. Perlmutter, where the creator of an AI sought copyright protection for an image generated by the system, the District Court held that:

“Human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.”

Only human contributions within an AI-assisted work, such as selection, arrangement, and modification qualify for protection.

 Fully autonomous AI output belongs to no one.

The United Kingdom: A Different Statutory Approach

The United Kingdom adopts a unique position under Section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. It provides that, for computer-generated works with no human author, the author is:

“the person who made the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work.”

Although this provision predates modern AI systems, it functions as a practical solution, allowing copyright to vest in the individual who configures or directs the AI system, even where the AI executes the actual creative expression.

The European Union: Originality as the Key Test

The European Union applies a different test entirely — originality. In Cofemel v. G-Star Raw (C-683/17), the Court of Justice of the European Union held that a work is protected if it reflects the author’s own intellectual creation. If a human contributes creative judgment when using AI, the resulting work could be protected. If the AI generates the work autonomously, authorship becomes uncertain, as EU law does not recognize AI entities as copyright holders.

The Global Debate

Countries continue to grapple with authorship in the age of machine creativity:

Australia, in Thaler v. Commissioner of Patents (2022), held that only humans can be inventors or authors.

China suggests that AI-generated work may qualify for protection if human creativity is involved.

Japan treats AI-generated content without human contribution as unprotected and freely usable.

The EU and UK are exploring new legal models, such as sui generis (unique) rights.

These contrasting approaches reveal a fundamental tension:

If no human creates the work, can anyone own it?

The emergence of AI has shifted attention from who presses the button to who exercises creative judgment.

Why It Matters

The implications are significant for creators, designers, musicians, marketers, lawyers, and businesses using AI tools:

• Content created solely by AI may not be protected and could fall into the public domain.

• Human involvement, through prompting, editing, selecting, or curating, may establish ownership.

• Businesses must carefully document human creative contributions to avoid disputes over ownership.

The shift is clear: authorship is no longer about physically creating the work, but about directing the creative process.

Conclusion

AI has changed how creative works are produced, but it has not changed the core rationale of copyright law. Copyright exists to reward human intellectual effort, judgment, and originality, not the autonomous output of machines.

AI may generate the content, but only humans create the idea, and copyright follows creativity.

In the age of AI, prompts may initiate the work,

but the mind behind the prompt turns it into property.