Is AI art copyrighted if I edit it myself?
Is AI art copyrighted if I edit it myself? A fellow illustrator told me last week that once you open an AI image in your own software and change enough of it, it becomes yours in the full legal sense. She had generated a scene, adjusted the colors, added her signature and a few brush strokes in Procreate, and said that was enough to own the whole picture.
Cite
Creatisimo, "Is AI art copyrighted if I edit it myself?", https://creatisimo.net/topic/is-ai-art-copyrighted-if-i-edit-it-myself/, accessed 2026-11-02.I am not sure I believe that. I have been testing generated images only as rough compositions for children's book spreads, and then repainting everything by hand, so for me the edits are very heavy. But I would like to know where the line is, in case a client asks who owns the final art, and I do not want to promise anything I cannot back up.
I am in the US, so US rules are what I need. How much editing counts, who owns the generated parts, and is there anything I should write down at the time I make the work?
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