17 Feb
2026
17 Feb
'26
5:47 p.m.
On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 7:51 AM Matt Borland via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:
https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Co...
tl;dr: AI-generated output isn't copyrightable. Prompts are ideas, not expression. Using AI as a tool doesn't affect your copyright. Modifying AI output can create copyrightable elements, but only the human parts. No new legislation needed. The interesting part they buried: identical prompts produce different outputs. That alone settles it. You can't be the "author" of expression you don't control. The rest is 41 pages of agreeing with this while being polite about it. Thanks