If you write books or write and draw comics, here is an essay you may find beneficial. I compiled it per AI research as to what's going on with AI, AUTHORSHIP AND THE LAW then ran it back through AI for a fact-check. Hope it helps clear up some things for creatives out there.

The law enforces a strict boundary within a single book, comic, or album with the ''Compilation Standard.'' You can claim a hybrid copyright on the registration form as to the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the book. For example, in the landmark case Zarya of the Dawn, the human author secured a copyright for the book's overall structure and edited text, but the raw AI-generated illustrations received zero protection.

On AI-animated videos of your own characters and drawings, a hybrid mix of you, the human, and AI, the uncopyrightable machine, your character is inside that video.

Therefore, anyone downloading it and selling it without your permission is making an illegal, unauthorized copy of your art. If you choose to register the work for a copyright, you would file a 'Limitation of Claim' and explain that your original characters and art are the basis of the AI-generated video.

While you can only take someone to court if you have a copyright registration, you can always use your DMCA rights to force a takedown of pirated work. All online platforms are legally obligated to provide these takedown notice forms and remove the illegal content.

You can use AI for research and fictional universe building and still keep your copyright as long as you write the text itself of your book. The law treats AI like a research assistant as long as you have written the actual text.

If you edit AI, that is, if you extensively revise or go back over AI-generated text, or even if you use AI to edit your own pre-existing human draft, the new expression you add is protected but you must file a ''limitation of claim,'' check a box on the registration form that is essentially stating you are not trying to own the AI parts, then briefly state exactly what you added.

Conversely, if AI edits you, if you wrote an original book draft and simply ran it through a generative AI tool to fix grammar, polish tone, or smooth out transitions, you retain your copyright. The law views this similarly to using a highly advanced spell-checker or dictionary because the core "expressive choices" (the plot, characters, and primary sentences) originated from your human mind.

For a heavily revised AI manuscript, in the 'limitation of claim' section of your registration, you would write something like: "Editing, extensive revisions, and additional human-authored text." They take your word for it, at least initially, since lying on the form is perjury. If you're honest, the registration certificate will officially state that the copyright only covers the "textual revisions and editing" added by the human.

Even if you don't file the copyright registration, you still have DMCA rights per online platforms using forms they provide, and they are legally obligated to take down the work should your work be illegally copied by others. As noted, copyright registration gives you the right to take the offender to court In the United States. You cannot file a copyright lawsuit in federal court until the U.S. Copyright Office has officially issued a registration certificate (or rejected it). It acts as your mandatory legal "ticket" into the courtroom.

Then in a real-world lawsuit for plagiarism, you must show the judge your digital paper trail, and then the judge compares the raw AI text to the final book and makes a decision.

You can protect yourself by keeping early human-written drafts, outlines, and edit histories to physically prove their creative progression. Also, keep separate, dated Google Docs or Word files of your original prompts, the raw AI outputs.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: per Google AI.

I submitted the above text onto Google for fact-checking purposes, here is what it returned...

''The submitted text accurately reflects current U.S. Copyright Office guidance on AI-assisted creative works, emphasizing the 'compilation standard' and the distinction between human-authored, edited, and raw AI content. It correctly notes that while raw AI output is not protected, human-edited, AI-assisted text, and human-created, AI-proofread content may be copyrighted, provided that a "limitation of claim" is filed to exclude unprotectable AI content. For further information on copyrighting AI-assisted works, consult the U.S. Copyright Office.''