Who owns AI-generated images?

Ownership has two layers. The contract layer is the tool's terms of service, which say what the provider claims and what it grants you. The law layer is copyright, which decides whether there is anything to own.

On the law layer, the D.C. Circuit held in Thaler v. Perlmutter (2025) that the Copyright Act requires a human author, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal on March 2, 2026. The Copyright Office says prompts alone are unlikely to make you the author of the output.

Your own contributions can still be protected. The Office says that where you put your own copyrightable work into a tool and it is perceptible in the output, you are the author of at least that portion, and creative selection, arrangement or modification can also be protected.

This is general information, not legal advice, and the rules differ by country.