Media generated by artificial intelligence present unique challenges for licensing, attribution, and scope evaluation. As the technology is rapidly developing, and there are many legal and ethical gray areas concerning AI-generated media, best practices may change rapidly.

Per the Commons project scope, only media that are realistically useful for an educational purpose should be hosted on Commons. Just because an AI image is interesting, pretty, or looks like a work of art, that doesn't mean that it is necessarily within the scope of Commons. While some AI-generated media fall within our scope, media that lack a realistic educational use may be nominated for deletion.

In the United States, Indonesia^[1] and most other jurisdictions,^[2] only works by human authors qualify for copyright protection. In 2022 and 2023, the US Copyright Office repeatedly confirmed that this means that AI-created artworks that lack human authorship are ineligible for copyright.^[3][4][5] The Commons community has rejected deletion requests that relied on such copyright claims, and tagged images generated by models such as DALL-E as {{PD-algorithm}}.

In the United Kingdom there is copyright protection for AI-generated media:

Unlike most other countries, the UK protects computer-generated works which do not have a human creator (s178 CDPA). The law designates the author of such a work as “the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken” (s9(3) CDPA). Protection lasts for 50 years from the date the work is made (s12(7) CDPA).^[6]

In deletion requests, it may therefore be necessary to determine whether the work was generated in the United Kingdom, and if this can be affirmed, deletion may be necessary.

In China, AI-generated media may or may not be protected by copyright. In the specific case of Li v Liu (2023), a Chinese court ruled that an image generated by Stable Diffusion was protected by copyright. The court ruled that the image met the requirement of "intellectual achievement" due to the prompter's design of the prompt, selection of parameters, and selection of the image. It ruled that the image met the requirement of "originality" due to the image reflecting the prompter's aesthetic choices and personal judgments. The court's analysis was based on the prompter's complex prompt and process of adjustment and modification, and emphasized that the process was not merely "mechanical". Other cases of AI-generated media may not meet these requirements. It should also be noted that China uses a civil law system rather than a common law system, so other courts in China are free to decide differently.^[7]

Similar to the United Kingdom section above, the Cap. 528 Copyright Ordinance provides a 50-year term for computer-generated works under 17. Duration of copyright in literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works:

Although some AI providers may claim copyright ownership over generated works, such claims are unlikely to be legally valid or enforceable. This includes claims by AI providers that generated images cannot be used for commercial purposes (for example, Midjourney's free tier does not allow commercial use, but this is unlikely to be legally enforceable as Midjourney images are not copyrighted).

Most image-generating AI models were trained using works that are protected by copyright. In some cases, such models can produce images that contain major copyrightable elements of those copyrighted training images, making these outputs derivative works. Accordingly, there is a risk that AI-generated art uploaded on Commons may violate the rights of the authors of the original works.

When using AI to create media intended to imitate the style of a particular artist, such as using prompts that include the name of a specific artist, there is a risk that the output will be a derivative work of specific works by that artist. If those works are not yet in the public domain, it is possible that the output constitutes a copyright infringement. If clear similarities to specific copyrighted works are evident, those images should be nominated for deletion.

Images that depict characters from or are based on proprietary works such as movies, TV shows, computer games, comic books or manga/anime might qualify as derivative works under copyright law. If the underlying work is copyrighted and not freely licensed, publication of such derivative works probably constitutes a copyright infringement. See the guideline on fan art for more specific guidance on how to distinguish infringing from non-infringing fan art.

The United States Copyright Office has ruled that while individual images generated by Artificial Intelligence cannot be copyrighted, significant modifications by a human author can be.^[8] For example, in the webcomic Zarya of the Dawn, the images are generated by Midjourney (and are thus not copyrighted). However, the composition of the pages, the arrangement of the images, and the story are all copyrighted by a human.^[5] When choosing whether to upload a piece of AI-generated media, make sure that it does not have sufficient human contributions that could be copyrighted.

Material that harasses, insults or defames a living person or a group of people should not be hosted on Commons under the Wikimedia Terms of Use and COM:DIGNITY. Questionable material should be discussed in a deletion request; in serious or repeated cases, the uploader or files in question should be reported to the administrators' noticeboard.

Per Commons:Non-copyright restrictions, "non-copyright related restrictions are not considered relevant to the freedom requirements of Commons". If a user violates the terms of use of an AI provider, that is a matter between them and the provider. The terms of use do not affect Commons, the rights of reusers, or the works themselves.