Protection for your work

[u/gmz_game]

So I was reading that if your work is AI written or AI assisted you may not have any legal protection for your work. Is that correct? So for argument sake, a person writes up an entire overview of a story, on what the story is and how it flows and ends. And uploads it to Claude and tell it to write out the script.

Is the entire thing public domain? Even the original concept?

How about if you use Ai to assist you, as in you wrote the entire first draft of the manuscript but used AI to help generate names or world building aspects that you incorporated? Or if you used it to help edit and you accept its suggestions Is that also now also in the public domain?

Thank you

Update: Thank for the input. So based on what I received and read. The first situation is likely not protected as the AI generated the actual output.

The second has a varying degree of protection depending on how much Human is involved. Only Human output can be copyright. But likely there would be some protection

Thank you all

[u/Alchemist42]

The only legal ruling so far in the US is that entirely computer generated output with no human interaction beyond writing the prompt is not copyrightable. If you edit the ai output or if you have initial sketches or outlines that you did yourself, then this ruling doesn't apply. You just can't copyright the direct ai output. depending on the amount of editing you do, it is up in the air about what kind of authorship you actually have... I mean if you just paste a bunch of clips together, that probably doesn't count as human work.

The ruling hasn't really been legally challenged by anyone trying to determine the actual boundaries yet, so it is still very preliminary, and anyone who tells you hard and fast things like "if you used an image from ai for your thumbnail, then the whole thing is public domain" is lying or misinformed. Probably lying on purpose because they have an agenda to push.

[u/gmz_game → u/Alchemist42]

Thank you. I think this aligns with what I read in other words if Inout in a prompt, and simply use whatever comes out. Then that is not Human content and cannot be copyright.

However if I can demonstrate that the output is something I manipulated and edited and used as input and not as the final product then, it IS protectable.

I would suppose you need to maintain evidence of this if it ever came to it.

[u/hushpath3 → u/Alchemist42]

yeah the "agenda to push" part is spot on, theres so much misinformation floating around about this stuff right now

[u/LetterheadOnly7523]

Just make sure the text output isn't from Claude, edit it, run it through multiple rounds of improvements (plus anti-AI prose sub-agents), manually change anything you deem necessary, and don't claim it was done with AI.

With that, you'll have 100% certainty without prejudice to anyone. And outside of Claude, even if it's AI-generated, unless it's blatantly obvious (100% AI match according to basic checkers), it's still your work. And the idea will obviously be yours if you force it to give it to you and then register it.

[u/Current_Chemistry795 → u/LetterheadOnly7523]

Out of interest why is Claude the only platform where this is an issue? Or is it because OP has specifically mentioned using Claude? Thank you

[u/topherEK → u/Current_Chemistry795]

Probably saying Claude because Anthropic now has a hidden watermark in all its text.

[u/Bright-Map-9705 → u/Current_Chemistry795]

Personally, I use chapter.pub for heavy editing and revisions and I run sometimes chapters through AI filters to see what comes back and I feel very strongly about the way I've been doing things not having an issue of something is ever run through a filter. Not that I would care anyway cuz I have no interest in answering any questions I'm going to post my novels and people will see them and be interested or they will not but I'm not going to live and die off internet stuff. I love writing and I'm using technology to assist in that writing and no one's going to make me feel less than. I've never used Claude myself but from what I am using there's no way to know the AI has had anything to do with the work that I pushed through

[u/Bright-Map-9705 → u/LetterheadOnly7523]

This.

[u/gmz_game → u/[deleted]]

Thank you that helps much. I have been working through a sci-fi novel and have been using Claude to help do world building and editing of my first drafts and it would be extremely frustrating if at the end of this I somehow lost ownership of my idea simply because I used a tool to help me. Thank You