Who owns ‘brain rot’? Inside the international legal drama over a beloved meme; The Guardian, October 6, 2026

 Kari Paul, The Guardian; Who owns ‘brain rot’? Inside the international legal drama over a beloved meme

"One of the most beloved characters in an absurdist genre of online video content has become the center of an international legal battle that could determine where human creativity ends and artificial intelligence begins...

The character has generated a great deal of money and stands to create much more – he will soon be joining Fortnite as a skin. But who should benefit from this virality?

That question is at the heart of a lawsuit filed in the US district court’s northern district of California, where a games company is suing the French creative agency Mementum, which represents Noxa, over the right to use Triple T as a character in a popular Roblox game.

Eben Jeda, co-founder of Mementum Lab, said he started the agency with the goal of modernizing economic infrastructure around internet-native works, the creators of which are often completely cut out of any resulting profit."

If You Prompt a Movie or Song Into Existence With AI, You Shouldn’t Be Able to Profit From It; The Hollywood Reporter, August 31, 2026

 David Barber, The Hollywood Reporter; If You Prompt a Movie or Song Into Existence With AI, You Shouldn’t Be Able to Profit From It

"Preserving the value of human creativity is not as difficult as it would seem. I propose that the following two provisions be the framework of legislation for the protection of artists:

1. Legislation prohibiting prompt-driven outputs or assets of Generative AI models, and whole works that contain prompt-driven outputs or assets of Generative AI models as any part of said whole, from being copyrighted.

2. Legislation stating that all prompt-driven Generative AI outputs, assets, and their derivatives be clearly labeled as such: Visibly – pictures, images, and videos; Audibly – songs, scores, sound effects/design;  Metadata – trackable for ALL generative AI outputs.

The goal of a law, or laws, built upon these foundational principles, is to disallow the:

• prompting of a song into existence and profiting from it
• prompting of a film or video into existence and profiting from it
• killing of creative departments and using prompt-driven outputs to replace their artistry
• existence of unidentifiable deepfakes

Under such regulations, individual prompted outputs would be ineligible for copyright protection, as would whole works that contain them. Examples include films that use a prompt-generated score, sound effects, visual effects, or VoiceOver, and songs that use prompt-generated horn sections, backup vocals, or other core elements that contribute to the song’s final presentation. Beyond the ethical and moral reasons for these provisions, there is also a legal basis for them.

The language must also prevent corporations from hiding any prompt-driven Generative AI usage under Trade Secret Law."

EFF to Courts: Don’t Rewrite Copyright Over AI Hype; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), August 31, 2026

 TORI NOBLE AND CORYNNE MCSHERRY, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); EFF to Courts: Don’t Rewrite Copyright Over AI Hype

"It is not the place of courts to say these people are not artists or that AI cannot augment human creativity in a positive way."

Who owns ideas in the AI age?; Fortune, April 8, 2026

 Francesca Cassidy , Fortune; Who owns ideas in the AI age?; David Shelley, CEO of Hachette’s U.K. and U.S. operations, on taking on Big Tech, defending copyright, and why the future of human creativity is at stake.

"Can you ever really own an idea?"

The Guardian view on changes to copyright laws: authors should be protected over big tech; The Guardian, March 13, 2026

 Editorial , The Guardian; The Guardian view on changes to copyright laws: authors should be protected over big tech

"In a scene that might have come from a dystopian novel, books were being stamped with “Human Authored” logos at this week’s London Book Fair. The Society of Authors described its labelling scheme as “an important sticking plaster to protect and promote human creativity in lieu of AI labelled content in the marketplace”.

Visitors to the fair were also being given copies of Don’t Steal This Book, an anthology of about 10,000 writers including Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, Malorie Blackman, Jeanette Winterson and Richard Osman, in which the pages are completely blank. The back cover states: “The UK government must not legalise book theft to benefit AI companies.” The message is clear: writers have had enough.

The fair comes the week before the government is due to deliver its progress report on AI and copyright, after proposals for a relaxation of existing laws caused outrage last year. Philippa Gregory, the novelist, described the plans for an “opt-out” policy, which puts the onus on writers to refuse permission for their work to be trawled, as akin to putting a sign on your front door asking burglars to pass by...

A House of Lords report published last week lays out two possible futures: one in which the UK “becomes a world-leading home for responsible, legalised artificial intelligence (AI) development” and another in which it continues “to drift towards tacit acceptance of large-scale, unlicensed use of creative content”. One scenario protects UK artists, the other benefits global tech companies. To avoid a world of empty content, the choice is clear."

Here's who owns what when it comes to AI, creativity and intellectual property; World Economic Forum, October 10, 2025

 Seemantani Sharma, Co-Founder, Mabill Technologies | Intellectual Property & Innovation Expert, Mabill Technologies, World Economic Forum ; Here's who owns what when it comes to AI, creativity and intellectual property

"Rethinking ownership

The intersection of AI, consciousness and intellectual property requires us to rethink how ownership should evolve. Keeping intellectual property strictly human-centred safeguards accountability, moral agency and the recognition of human creativity. At the same time, acknowledging AI’s expanding role in production may call for new approaches in law. These could take the form of shared ownership models, new categories of liability or entirely new rights frameworks.

For now, the legal balance remains with humans. As long as AI lacks consciousness, it cannot be considered a rights-holder under existing intellectual property theories. Nonetheless, as machine intelligence advances, society faces a pivotal choice. Do we reinforce a human-centred system to protect dignity and creativity or do we adapt the law to reflect emerging realities of collaboration between humans and machines?

This is more than a legal debate. It is a test of how much we value human creativity in an age of intelligent machines. The decisions we take today will shape the future of intellectual property and the meaning of authorship, innovation and human identity itself."

Copyright Office Releases Part 2 of Artificial Intelligence Report; U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 1060, January 29, 2025

U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 1060; Copyright Office Releases Part 2 of Artificial Intelligence Report

"Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is releasing Part 2 of its Report on the legal and policy issues related to copyright and artificial intelligence (AI). This Part of the Report addresses the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI. The Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology, as they have applied to technological innovations in the past. It concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts. The Office confirms that the use of AI to assist in the process of creation or the inclusion of AI-generated material in a larger human-generated work does not bar copyrightability. It also finds that the case has not been made for changes to existing law to provide additional protection for AI-generated outputs.

“After considering the extensive public comments and the current state of technological development, our conclusions turn on the centrality of human creativity to copyright,” said Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office. “Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection. Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine, however, would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright.”

In early 2023, the Copyright Office announced a broad initiative to explore the intersection of copyright and AI. Since then, the Office has issued registration guidance for works incorporating AI-generated content, hosted public listening sessions and webinars, met with experts and stakeholders, published a notice of inquiry seeking input from the public, and reviewed more than 10,000 responsive comments, which served to inform these conclusions.

The Report is being released in three Parts. Part 1 was published on July 31, 2024, and recommended federal legislation to respond to the unauthorized distribution of digital replicas that realistically but falsely depict an individual. The final, forthcoming Part 3 will address the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works, including licensing considerations and the allocation of any potential liability.

As announced last year, the Office also plans to supplement its March 2023 registration guidance and update the relevant sections of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices.

For more information about the Copyright Office’s AI Initiative, please visit the website."