Who owns the text or image an AI made for you?

Copyright is the right to stop others from copying a creative work. It exists to reward authors, and in both Canada and the United States the author is understood to be a human being. That is why ownership of AI output is a puzzle: when you type a one-line prompt and an image generator draws the picture, who is the author? As of October 2026 the practical answer in both countries is that nobody clearly owns the purely generated part, while you own whatever you contributed yourself.

This matters for ordinary work. A blog post you drafted and then had an AI polish is still mostly yours. A poster produced entirely from a prompt may be free for anyone to copy. The difference lies in how much of the final work reflects your own choices.

Where things stand in October 2026

United States. The US Copyright Office's January 2025 report on copyrightability sets out the current position. Using AI as a tool does not take away protection for what you create. But material generated by AI, or produced without enough human control over its expressive elements, is not protected, and with today's tools, prompts alone are not considered enough control. What can be protected is your own expression that remains visible in the output, plus creative selection, arrangement or modification of AI material. Each case is decided on its facts. In March 2026 the US Supreme Court declined to hear Stephen Thaler's appeal, leaving in place the ruling that a work with only an AI system as its author cannot be registered.

Canada. The Copyright Act never defines "author." In its 2023 consultation on generative AI, the federal government explained that Canadian case law points to a human author who brings their own skill and judgment to the work. It said a person working with AI may contribute enough to be the author, but that this is far less likely when the work comes from short instructions alone. The paper called the question of who should own AI-generated works an open one and asked for views on three options: protect only human-made works, give authorship to whoever arranged for the work, or create a new kind of right for AI output.

How much of your work is protected?

This table summarizes how those principles are likely to apply. It is a general guide for learning, not a legal opinion on your work.

The pattern is consistent: protection follows human creative decisions, not the time you spent on prompts.

A worked example: a café logo

A café in Papineauville asks an image generator for "a steaming coffee cup inside a maple leaf, flat style, two colors." The fifth result is close to what the owner wants. If the café uses that image as is, it may have no copyright to enforce.

Here is how the owner can turn it into work that is more clearly theirs:

1. Treat the AI image as a sketch. Print it or open it in a drawing program as a reference layer.
2. Redraw it. Trace and rework the shapes by hand or in a vector editor, changing proportions and details.
3. Add original elements. Hand-drawn lettering for the café's name, a color palette chosen by the owner.
4. Keep a record. Save the prompt, the generated reference and each version of the redrawn design with dates.

An AI assistant can help with the record-keeping:

I am creating a logo for my café. I started from an AI-generated image and then redrew it myself. Make me a one-page log template with columns for date, version, what the AI produced, what I changed by hand, and the file name. Add two example rows based on this description: I redrew the cup outline in a vector editor and replaced the generated lettering with my own hand lettering.

Can someone else copy your AI-generated logo, and how do you protect it?

If the logo is purely AI-generated, copyright may give you little to stand on, so a competitor could copy the image itself. Adding substantial human work, as in the café example, improves your position, but only for the parts you made.

For a logo, though, the more useful tool is often trademark, a separate system. The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) groups brands, logos and slogans under trademarks, and written works, videos and music under copyright. A registered trademark gives the owner exclusive use of the mark throughout Canada for a renewable 10-year term and stops others from registering or using a confusingly similar mark. Owning the matching domain name, or incorporating under that name, creates no trademark rights on its own.

AI adds one more reason to register carefully. An image generator can produce something close to an existing brand without telling you. CIPO recommends searching registered and pending trademarks before you file, and that search doubles as a check that your new logo does not imitate someone else's. Once registered, you must keep using the mark for the goods or services listed, or it can be removed from the register.

For a logo that will carry your business for years, a short consultation with a registered trademark agent before you print signs and cups is usually money well spent.