Being the author of a work

Generated images, prose and music are everywhere, and this register records how much of the craft around them has already moved. Authorship is a different thing from production. It is the position of the one who made the work and answers for it: who is credited, who may license it, who is sued when it turns out to copy someone else. The United States Copyright Office restated the requirement in January 2025 after a long public examination. Copyright protects what is the product of human authorship, and writing a prompt does not make the person who wrote it the author of what came back. The Compendium has said the same since 2014. What is held is not the ability to produce something worth reading or looking at. It is the standing of an author, which needs someone the work can belong to.