{"id":187,"date":"2026-06-21T11:10:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T10:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/?p=187"},"modified":"2026-06-21T11:10:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T10:10:47","slug":"writing-and-ai-copyright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/?p=187","title":{"rendered":"Writing and AI – Copyright"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Caveat: I am not<\/strong> a lawyer and the following represents my<\/em> understanding of the law – not to be relied upon for legal purposes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the ’60s, in England, if I write sufficiently specific instructions to make a computer create a piece of work (writing, artwork, a computer program etc.), then I<\/em> <\/strong>own the copyright in that work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I make a drawing of a unique object using computer aided design software, have my computer turn that into a .stl file (Standard Triangle Language, a file used to define a 3D shape using triangles), then put that into a ‘slicer’ (software which translates the stl file into g-code the detailed instructions for my type of 3D printer) and use the printer (and its embedded computer) to produce the object that I had in mind at the start. I think most people would say that I created that object and should be entitled to hold copyright in my original work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I write a 500 word synopsis of a novel and ask ChatGPT to give me the 100,000 word finished novel, then I own the copyright in that novel. Should I? In most parts of the world the legal answer seems to be ‘No’ and there are moves to change English law to fall in line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The argument in the US and other jurisdictions seems to be that if the AI created the work, then, since the AI is not a person and cannot own the copyright, there is no copyright. Of course, the word created<\/em> is the crucial one in this. I hold copyright in what I write in my own words. Suppose I decide that I have overused the word ‘significant’ in my novel. I could look online at a Thesaurus and go through changing occurrences of ‘significant’ to ‘noteworthy’ or ‘important’, at random. I could get my word processing software to do most of that work for me. I could write a program to do it for me, either from a list of synonyms that I gave it, or by looking online for synonyms. Or I could get ChatGPT to do the job. Is there a difference in ‘creativity’?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again, I have to leave it to better minds than mine to define the legal distinctions in a consistent and logical fashion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caveat: I am not a lawyer and the following represents my understanding of the law – not to be relied upon for legal purposes! Since the ’60s, in England, if I write sufficiently specific instructions to make a computer create a piece of work (writing, artwork, a computer program etc.), then I own the copyright […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}