The law applicable to generated content evolves quickly and varies by country. Here we present the main principles as they stand in French and European law as of mid-2026. For a binding professional situation, particularly before filing a trademark, assigning rights, or signing a contract, professional advice remains necessary.
The question seems simple and is anything but. You ask an AI for a text, it produces it, you publish it. Who owns it? Three candidates come to mind, and the most common answer is the one nobody thinks of.
Two questions that are systematically conflated
All the misunderstanding stems from this. There are two distinct questions, and they do not have the same answer.
Am I allowed to use it? This is a contractual question, governed by the service's terms of use. And the answer is generally yes: most major providers grant you rights to the outputs, including for commercial use, sometimes conditional on a paid subscription.
Do I hold copyright over it? This is a legal question, and it depends on no contract. Copyright arises from the creation of an original work by a natural person. No company can grant it to you, because it is not something given: it either comes into being, or it does not.
This is exactly the distinction we drew for music in our article on Suno, Udio and the Sacem. It applies identically to text, images, and code.
For content generated 100% by AI, with no substantial human creative input, the most likely answer under French law is: no one is its author. Not you, because typing a prompt is generally not considered an act of creation. Not the AI, which is not a person. Not the company, which built the tool and not the work. The content exists, you can exploit it, but it enjoys no protection.
What this means in practice
This lack of protection has a direct consequence that escapes many: if no one holds rights over content, no one can prevent a third party from reusing it.
A fully generated visual used as a brand identity could therefore be reused by a competitor without you having the usual legal basis to oppose it. Other protections may exist elsewhere, such as trademark law if you have filed a registration, but copyright itself is lacking.
This is the most important point in this article for anyone building something serious: the question is not just can I use it, but can I stop others from using it.
The threshold of human contribution
Everything therefore hinges on the notion of creative input. Where does the line lie?
No numerical rule exists, and this is precisely what courts will have to clarify in the years ahead. But a logic emerges: what matters is the existence of identifiable creative choices exercised by a person.
Typing a prompt and publishing the result as-is: no sufficient input under the dominant reading. Generating thirty variants, selecting one based on an artistic intention, substantially reworking it, integrating it into an overall composition: there, input becomes defensible. Writing the structure and ideas yourself, and using AI to rephrase: the input lies in what you designed.
The difficulty is that this threshold remains vague, and it is judged after the fact, in the event of a dispute.
Three practical tips
Document your process. This is the most useful advice. Keep your successive versions, your notes, your iterations. In a dispute, your ability to demonstrate creative choices will determine the outcome far more than your statements.
Read your provider's assignment clause. Terms vary: some services reserve commercial use for paid subscriptions. Publishing generated content from a free account may constitute a contractual breach, independently of any copyright question.
Check what you are committing to. If you deliver content to a client while assigning rights you do not hold, you expose yourself contractually. Many service contracts contain warranties of ownership that fully generated content cannot honour.
What to remember
The paradox of this situation is worth noting. These tools allow anyone to produce in quantity, and this very production does not attain the status of a work. What remains protectable is what you bring: your intention, your choices, your work on the material.
One can see this as a constraint. One can also see it as a useful confirmation: the law continues to reward the human creative act, not the command given to a tool. In a world where producing costs nothing anymore, this is probably the most interesting distinction to cultivate, including for reasons that have nothing to do with the law.