By definition, copyright protects creative works. The law, however, is unclear about what "creative" means or how "creative" something must be for copyright to protect it. Copyright is easy to obtain, and most works clear copyright's creativity hurdle, but not everything has the requisite creativity, and it can be difficult to identify where the line is between creative and not creative enough.

This issue has taken on additional relevance with the rise of generative AI tools that can produce works that are ostensibly creative, following user prompts. Can user prompts, which are essentially instructions, be creative enough to justify copyright protection for AI outputs?

In this workshop, we will talk about copyright's creativity requirement and try to pinpoint what we think should or should not be creative enough for copyright protection to attach.