Generative AI and Copyright Law: Human Authorship, Originality, and Comparative Perspectives

This article examines the copyright status of AI-generated content with particular focus on authorship and the threshold of protectability from a comparative law perspective. It argues that contemporary copyright systems remain fundamentally anthropocentric, conditioning protection on human creative contribution. Fully autonomous AI outputs, in principle, fall outside traditional copyright protection due to the absence of human authorship. The study comparatively analyzes the legal approaches of Germany and the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and China.

While German and EU law adhere strictly to the requirement of “personal intellectual creation,” and U.S. doctrine consistently enforces the “human authorship” requirement, the United Kingdom provides a specific statutory solution for computer-generated works. Chinese jurisprudence, by contrast, has developed a more functional approach that attributes authorship where meaningful human organizational or directive input can be identified. With regard to Turkish law, the article demonstrates that the originality requirement (“hususiyet”) under the Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works similarly presupposes human creation, and that existing mechanisms such as collective works and sui generis database protection are insufficient to protect standalone AI outputs. In order to address growing legal uncertainty, the article proposes a three-tier protection model based on the degree of human creative involvement: (1) full copyright protection where substantial human creative direction exists; (2) a limited sui generis right for structured but not fully original AI-assisted productions; and (3) public domain status for fully autonomous AI outputs. The article further recommends procedural and administrative reforms, including disclosure obligations and evidentiary requirements concerning AI involvement in the creative process.