The US Copyright Office will consider an AI-generated work copyrightable if a human can prove they themselves put a meaningful amount of creative effort into the final content, according to a policy published on Thursday.

AI software capable of automatically generating images or text from an input prompt or instruction has made it easier for people to churn out content. Correspondingly, the USCO has received an increasing number of applications to register copyright protections for material, especially artwork, created using such tools.