You Can't Own a Raw AI Shot, but You Can Own the Edit Around It

If a client asks for exclusive ownership of a spot that is mostly generated footage, you may be promising to transfer rights that, under US law, nobody holds. The answer is not to stop using AI. It is to stop promising copyright you cannot prove, and to build the evidence for the parts you can claim while you edit.

Our position: treat human authorship as a deliverable. Log it as you go, write it into the contract, and price the difference between what you own and what you merely licence. What follows covers where US law stood on 2 October 2026, an archive routine for the edit suite, and a clause to take to your lawyer. This is a production desk's reading, not legal advice, and other jurisdictions treat AI output differently.

Where the law stands

• Human authorship is required. On 2 March 2026 the US Supreme Court declined to hear Thaler v. Perlmutter. That leaves in place the 2025 DC Circuit ruling upholding the Copyright Office's human-authorship requirement (Mayer Brown).
• Prompts are not authorship. In its January 2025 report, the Copyright Office said prompts "essentially function as instructions that convey unprotectable ideas". It added that current tools do not give users enough control over outputs. Mayer Brown also notes that no agency has given bright-line guidance on how much human contribution is enough.
• The test case on heavy prompting is still open. In Allen v. Perlmutter (D. Colo., 1:24-cv-02665), Jason Allen is challenging the refusal to register his Midjourney image Théâtre D'opéra Spatial, which took more than 600 prompts (Mondaq). The Office argues that his prompts set subject, scene, tone and style, while "Midjourney—not Allen—generated the expressive visual details". Summary-judgment briefing closed on 27 February 2026, and no merits ruling had been reported as of 12 August 2026. We found no ruling reported since, but check the docket before relying on this.
• What can be registered. Under the Office's 2023 registration guidance, AI-generated material that is "more than de minimis" must be excluded from the claim. You can still claim the selection, coordination and arrangement of human and AI material, and your own modifications. The Zarya of the Dawn graphic novel is the example: the human-written text was protected, but the Midjourney images were not.
• The industry is asking too. The rules for the 99th Academy Awards require human-authored screenplays. They also reserve the Academy's right to "request more information about the nature of the use and human authorship" (TheWrap).

In practice, a generated clip is probably not yours on its own. Your edit, your composite, your grade, your sound design and your arrangement of shots can be. Only your records can show where one ends and the other begins.

What counts as a human contribution in post

The Allen dispute turns on control over specific expression, not effort. So log the decisions where you, and not the model, decided what the frame looks like:

• Selection and order: which takes you used out of how many, and why. A logged keeper ratio of, say, one take in 40 (an illustrative figure) is evidence of human selection.
• Cutting: timing, rhythm and structure, and the cut-down versions.
• Compositing: roto, paint-outs, replaced skies, added practical elements, and live-action plates combined with generated ones.
• Grade: node trees and look decisions that change the image materially, not just a technical conversion.
• Drawn or shot inputs: storyboards, sketches, reference frames and your own photography used as image prompts or as plates. These are human-made before the model ever sees them.
• Sound: music, mix, foley and voice, all usually human-authored even on an AI-heavy spot.

The authorship trail: an archive routine

This routine is our own, built to fit a normal edit. It is not a format the Copyright Office prescribes.

1. Keep a prompt log per shot. Record the model and version, date, prompt, seed if exposed, input images, and the output file name. Export the platform's generation history at wrap, because platforms retire models and histories.
2. Keep the rejects, or at least a contact sheet of them. Your selection argument is only as good as the evidence of what you turned down.
3. Save versioned project files at milestones: assembly, rough cut, picture lock, online. Name them with dates and never overwrite them.
4. Keep a source map at lock. Export an EDL or a marker list that tags every event as Human (camera original, stock, graphics), AI-raw, or AI-modified, with a one-line note on what was changed.
5. Take before/after stills for every AI shot you composited, painted or graded heavily.
6. Write a one-page authorship statement at delivery. Cover who did what, which tools were used, and which elements are AI-generated without material modification. If you ever register the work, this becomes the limitation-of-claim wording.
7. Archive it with the masters for as long as you keep the project. Five years is our default, longer if the client's usage term is longer.

How to word deliverable rights

The common mistake is a boilerplate "all right, title and interest" assignment applied to a spot that contains unprotectable material. Mondaq's analysis makes the same point: contracts, not copyright, now carry most of the weight on ownership. Here is a starting clause. It is our own drafting, and you should have it reviewed for your jurisdiction:

• "Producer assigns to Client all copyright that subsists in the Deliverables, including in the selection, coordination and arrangement of their elements and in all human-authored contributions. Client acknowledges that the Deliverables include material generated with artificial intelligence tools, identified in the Authorship Schedule, in which copyright may not subsist. As to such material, Producer grants Client an exclusive (to the extent Producer is able), perpetual, worldwide licence of whatever rights Producer holds, and warrants only that Producer has complied with the terms of service of the tools used. Producer makes no warranty that AI-generated material is protectable by copyright or that third parties are prevented from using similar material."

Attach the Authorship Schedule, which is the source map from step 4, to the delivery note. If a client needs true exclusivity on a hero visual, such as a mascot or a product hero shot, quote for building it from human-authored or substantially modified material. That is a different, more expensive job, and the estimate should say so.

The takeaway

You cannot argue your way into owning a raw generation. You can document your way into owning the edit around it. Start the prompt log and the source map on day one, because nobody can rebuild them convincingly after a dispute starts.