Introduction
There has been a recent trend of making art using AI by using a prompt. You get the art with whatever art style you want, from hyperrealist photos to recent Ghibli art trends; everything can be made using AI. With this current shift in trends on how things are made, this raises an important question on privacy, also, who owns the copyright of these arts, as AI is usually trained with art that is already present. Hence, there is no originality in it.Most of these arts that are available on the internet are already copyrighted. This raises a question of who will get the copyright of images created by AI. We will delve deeper into this question with a comparative study of different copyright laws from the US,EU, and India,then compare them to draw a conclusion.
What is copyright?
Copyright is defined in India. As defined by the Copyright Act, 1957, copyright is a legal right granted to the creators of original literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, as well as cinematograph films and sound recordings.[1]
Copyright laws regarding AI devised a product in the U.S
In the U.S., copyright is only granted to works created by humans. Although AI-generated work can still be copyrighted, it must be partially done by a human, and only the Human part of the work would be registered. Additionally, the work done by the AI must be disclosed.
In a similar case, theUS Copyright Office issued guidelines regarding AI, which specified that only human work in AI-generated content will be registered undercopyright.[2]
This shows that even though AI is being used to make artistic work, it cannot yet remove the human element in creative work.
EU policies regarding AI products
When it comes to AI, the EU does not recognise work made completely without using human intellectual creation.
The EU has proposed a bill to regulate AI and its creation, and has also made it mandatory to label products that are entirely created with AI to curb deepfakes, as well as to secure copyright on certain artistic works of others. All this has been introduced in the AI Act, which was implemented in February 2025 by the European Commission.[3]
This makes them one of the first to introduce regulation on AI. The Act also suggests making AI work available to the public domain, thereby increasing transparency in AI work. These are among the few steps taken to ensure that the copyright of individuals is protected from the rising trends of AI.
Ownership of AI-generated content
To understand the ownership of AI-generated content, first, we need to understand how most AI works in the real world; only then will we be able to understand its ownership.
Current AI is a generative software that feeds on data provided to it means it cannot create original work without it.
It requires pre-existing data to create something using a machine learning algorithm; the origin of that data is crucial to prevent copyright infringement, as the AI may be trained on other people’s work without their knowledge or consent, resulting in infringement of copyright.
The ownership of AI content may vary depending on the circumstances, including :
- The degree of human involvement.
- Terms and conditions of the software used.
- Local jurisdiction laws that govern AI, if any.
From this information, we can conclude that copyright over an AI product may belong to the software company, the user, or it may become the public domain.
India’s current legal position regarding AI products
Copyright in India is managed by the Indian Copyright Act 1957.Under section 2(d), “author” must be human except for computer-generated work, in which case, “person who caused the work to be generated” is recognised as copyright owner, but there is no mention of AI products.
As of 2025,India still does not have any legal framework or law for AI products
Indian parliament did not amend or make any law regarding that, nor is there any precedent set by the Supreme Court or High Court in any part of India.
Indian copyright law is obsolete and needs to be amended, or new laws need to be passed to better adapt to the modern world.
What India needs to do: policy suggestions
- Legislative reforms- India needs to make legislative reforms in modern policymaking to ensure faster and smoother policy for making laws in a modern fast fast-paced world. AI is evolving fast and may be integrated into our lives in many ways, so that India does not lag behind other countries in the modern world.
- Registration and disclosure rules- India needs to make sure that AI-created work needs to be flagged, also AI work in other artistic work needs to be disclosed so that copyright can be given based on work done by human efforts. India also needs to mandate how much work is to be done by humans to make it copyright-protected work.
- Protection laws for copyrighted work- AI is trained by using others’ copyrighted work, which may be without their knowledge or consent. India needs to make a law to ensure that this work may not be used, or if used, the copyright owner must be compensated for the work used by AI for its training.
- Separate IP for AI work- India can also consider making a separate IP for AI work to ensure work done using AI is also protected by law. This new IP can help separate AI work from work done completely by humans
- Make a clear law for AI ownership – India needs to make a clear law regarding AI ownership, as it is unclear who owns AI works after their creation, the AI company, or its user who created it using prompts. These thing needs to be clarified to ensure work of the user is protected.
- Change in privacy laws- The government of India needs to ensure private information is not being used to train AI models without consent. So, laws regarding privacy need to be changed.
These are some of the policy changes India can make to catch up with the modern world.
Conclusion
Laws regarding AI copyright are tricky and non-existent in most of the world. With the rise of AI, we need to ensure that these laws are not only made but also align with most of the world. Currently,the E.U. and the U.S are some of the few countries in the world that have started making laws regarding AI and copyright challenges that it creates. India lags far behind these countries when it comes to these laws and needs to catch up with these countries to ensure copyright is protected.
Use of AI is changing the way of doing work, and it must be identified to ensure copyright of those who make artistic work without AI can be protected, and people are not fooled by work made by AI.
These laws need to be made throughout the world to ensure copyright protection.
[2]U.S. Copyright Office Guidance on AI (March 2023)
[3]https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20230601STO93804/eu-ai-act-first-regulation-on-artificial-intelligence
Author Name- Ayask Pandey, a 4th-year law student.
