Author: Vedika Agrawal, SVKM NMIMS Indore

The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence systems has significantly disrupted the entire idea of traditional copyrights based on human creativity. The Copyright Act of 1957 primarily governs ownership and authorship in Indian copyright law, which is based on identifiable human agency. The current paper conducts a doctrinal and comparative study on the question of authorship versus ownership under Indian copyright law against this backdrop of AI-production. In terms of legislative provisions, court rulings, and policy evolution, it places India on par with the US and the UK.

AI nowadays can create music, create drawings, create text, and even create computer programs with little or no human intervention or contribution. This technological revolution poses a challenge to the very essence of copyright law — that only humans can be creative. Copyrights on original literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works are provided for by the Copyright Act of 1957. Under Section 2(d), authorship is defined, and ownership will generally be assigned to the so-called author by Section 17. When this Act was enacted, it was inconceivable that there would be questions about whether there could be non-human authors. The Act provides no direction on how to deal with AI-created works that were created by the use of AI. The absence of specific legislation regarding artificial intelligence (AI) creates a multitude of unaddressed, significant legal questions. For example: 1) Will a piece created by artificial intelligence satisfy the originality requirement from the case of Eastern Book Co. v. DB Modak? 2) Who will be entitled to authorship of a work created by an algorithm? 3) Who will hold ownership over the output produced by an AI program - the creator of the program, the person using the program, or will no one at all own it? Similar questions are being analyzed in many countries. However, U.S. Court rulings like Naruto v Slater indicate that the federal courts do not recognize copyright protection for works written by a non-human author. India's position regarding regulations and court rulings has yet to be articulated. Thus, one of the aspects that my research will focus on is whether Indian copyright laws adequately address how to establish ownership and authorship rights of AI-generated works or if there is a legislative gap that needs to be addressed through reforms. This article will evaluate literature, judicial interpretation, and statutory provisions, as well as look at the approaches taken by other nations to resolve these problems.

Over recent years, there has been an increase in AI and copyright scholarship exploring originality and the need for human authorship as early themes of examination. Researchers assert that the global copyright regimes utilize a Lockean labour theory and a personality theory in establishing human-centred characteristics of copyright regimes. The case of Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak modified the laws of originality in India. A modicum of creativity test was applied by the Supreme Court in this situation. The previous rule of 'sweat of the brow' from University of London Press Ltd. v. University Tutorial Press Ltd. was replaced by this test. However both of those measures relied upon the presumption of human intellectual labour. Comparative advantage scholarship identifies a different approach with respect to the UK. For example, Under Section 9(3) of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988 states that for Computer Generated Work, the author is defined as being the individual arranging the necessary arrangements to create the work. Despite whether this should be classified as 'Creative'; opponents will argue that this is an innovation leading to the artificiality of authorship and AI's autonomy will be disputed. In contrast, the US authorities' perspective is being changed.

The report examines how consumer preferences and behaviours related to sustainable fashion are changing over time, with a focus on Gen Z, who are the first generation to grow up in a digital world and have a large influence on the economy. Gen Z has a strong value for the environment and is driving change in retail by influencing their purchasing decisions based on their desire for brands to be transparent, authentic and socially responsible. This report combines the findings of various studies to provide insight into what motivates Gen Z consumers to make sustainable purchases. It also discusses the conflict between what Gen Z consumers say they want (i.e., to be sustainable) and what they actually purchase (i.e., the value-action gap). One contributing factor is the financial limitations and trends of fast fashion that often make it difficult for Gen Z consumers to purchase sustainably.

In India, Section 13 of the Copyright Act, 1957 is used to analyse the works generated by AI. This part safeguards original literary, dramatic works, musical works and artistic works, the cinematograph films and sound recordings.

Meaning of “Author” under Section 2(d)  

Section 2(d) defines "author" differently for various kinds of works. For literary, dramatic, musical and/or artistic works, the "author" is the person who actually creates the work; for computer generated works, the "author" is the individual who created the conditions under which the computer created the work. This distinction is relevant to current debates regarding artificial intelligence. At the time the law was enacted in 1957 and amended subsequently, it appears legislators were mainly concerned with mechanical outputs of computers (such as reports or databases that required human skill and effort), and their understanding of how computer generated works were created presupposed a human initiator, a computer system functioning as a tool and a human having control over the output created. These assumptions have been seriously challenged by modern generative AIs like large language models (LLs) and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), which produce results with statistical and machine learning processes that cannot be fully determined (even by the developer). So far, this is understood; now, it needs to be established whether the person who causes a computer produced work to be created can still be considered as "the author" when the computer was working: (1) as a semi-autonomous process and (2) whether the definition of "the person who caused the computer to create the work" applies not only to those humans but potentially also to the end-user(s) who prompted the AI.

Section 13 states that works must be “original.” The Act does not define originality, leaving its interpretation to the judiciary. This makes the judicial standard vital for AI-generated works.

Originality and Human Creativity 

The Supreme Court set the test of originality in India in the case of Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak. The Court did not follow the even stronger versions of creativity and creativity that might be essential because of the doctrine of sweat of the brow, but rather it adopted a business policy of a modicum of creativity. According to this test, the work should be original by the author, it should possess some degree of intellectual effort and one should not simply work like a machine.  

Can AI Satisfy the Originality Standard?  

Typically, AI's creative output is unique and innovative. However, in order to have good originality in regard to copyright law, something more than simply novelty is required; you must ascertain whether the creative product demonstrates some level of intellectual creative thinking by humans or else it cannot be considered creative at all (as defined by copyright law). Accordingly, when an AI-generated work such as a poem, painting or computer programming code is produced with no material contribution from a human, we would conclude that the AI has produced no creative intellectual work and cannot be granted authorship because the AI is not a separate legal person who has the ability to create or produce works on its own. Thus, if the AI has produced a creative work, then there should be no expectation that the AI will ever obtain authorship due to the absence of a human author. This will lead to a conflict between the law regarding creative works; the objective of the copyright law is to protect and preserve the creative works of creative individuals who have a human being's intellect and use of that intellect in a specific way to create a product that contains creative elements.

A standard for originality can be met with enough input from humans. This could include through developing more complex prompts, editing outputs through using them multiple times, selecting and changing the original generated content and changing any edits after generation has occurred. As a result, the input from humans in these cases will most likely meet the minimum standards for creativity. In considering the human control of AI generated work, determining if the creator of the work exercised independent creativity is ultimately a question that will be resolved by courts. Thus, the extent of human creativity will be part of the consideration when determining whether or not AI was used to assist in creating a work or not.

There are three criteria that could be used to evaluate the authorship of AI-generated works in order to apply the below spectrum and apply the factors to the work depending on how much human involvement was required to create the final work. These criteria include: 1) minimal prompting from the user (i.e. the user provided an instruction without embellishment), as the user did not demonstrate enough creativity; 2) guided creation (i.e. the user supplied the framework or the user provided multiple prompts to create various output before refining and selecting specific output form a range of options); and 3) significant editing by the human transformation of the content and the material produced from the AI-created draft would allow strong evidence that the individual would possess a copyright. The EBC standard would mean based on Indian case law, a fully automatic output from the AI would likely not be granted authorship if they do not demonstrate human participation to that extent.

The Copyright act of 17 of the copyright act defines the ownership of copyright as that of the author unless there are exceptions (such as works produced in employment). When it comes to AI the "author" is difficult to establish. Various parties could own it.  

The Programmer  

The code and model architecture are developed by the programmer. Nevertheless, the programmer is not the author of each particular output, the connection between programming and the eventual result can be too loose and calling programmers the authors would provide copyright to the effects they did not imagine or do not have any control over.

The AI Developer Company  

As a whole, businesses training AI models use great amounts of both training data and infrastructure and ownership of AI supports innovation. However, Copyright typically does not protect the system itself, but only the expression of the system, whereas, existing Software Developers own property in the associated software, so giving property rights to the outputs of an AI model may lead to an excessive concentration of rights.

The End-User

The final consumer makes an input and determines the usage of the outputs. Assuming the interpretation of a broad one, the user could be the individual who instigates the creation of the work. But this is in keeping with the degree of creativity. One brief fadeaway invitation may not be sufficient to be an author.

The Data Trainer  

It is very important for data trainers to establish patterning of output from an A.I.-System because the actual training data used by the system will determine how it will learn and generate the content. Even though the data trainers may have some involvement in the creation of that output, there is nothing they can do to exert any specific control or influence over the output provided by the A.I. As a result, data trainers would not be able to claim any rights of authorship and as such to impose any kind of credit or liability upon them, will be nearly impossible with the current copyright laws.

No One (Public Domain) 

The purpose of this report is to analyse how Gen Z is changing their preferences and how they are buying sustainable fashion products. Gen Z is the first generation to be born into a world where digital technology was already a part of daily life. They are becoming increasingly economically powerful, have strong beliefs about environmental issues, and are likely to change the way the fashion industry operates.

This report combines research about where these young people are finding their motivations for making sustainable choices based on having brands that can prove transparency, authenticity, and socially responsible behaviour.

The report also considers some of the contradictions in their behaviours, such as the value-action gap—a difference between their positive feelings towards being sustainable and their actual behaviour when buying something, which are often limited by their financial situation and the trend towards fast-fashion items. 

Contractual Allocation  

Otherwise, the content created by AI is commonly assigned ownership by platform terms of service. But, even such contractual agreements cannot be superior to the statutory requirements of the copyright law. When a document does not legally offer any protection to a certain piece of work, the rights cannot be created or replaced through the help of a contract only. This causes a high level of uncertainty to those companies who depend on AI-generated content, especially when it comes to ownership, enforcing, and commercialization.

Moral Rights under Section 57  

The moral rights of authors of copyright works include, as defined in s 57 of the Act, the right of attribution and the right of integrity for copyright works. If AI is not an author, then it will not have moral rights, nor will there be a reputation to protect. If an artificially attributed author is subsequently represented as the author of a work by a human person, then that person will have moral rights as the actual author of the work. This presents a potential difficulty for artificial attribution of authorship because the person attributed to the person who is credited with the work may not have had authority to claim authorship of the work, and thus the moral rights of the attributed author may be unrelated to any sense of creativity. Further, as moral rights cannot be assigned or transferred, but will remain with the actual author regardless of the economic rights that may have been assigned to an author by artificial attribution, there may be significant long-term problems with legal issues arising from artificial attribution of authorship.

1. United Kingdom  

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act allows for protection from copyright for most computer generated content, because the person who makes the arrangements to create that content is deemed to be the author. Generally, this pragmatic approach helps to establish ownership of AI products and protects against their use in common or for commercial purposes, thus giving the business community confidence in the technology. On the other hand, some people feel that this gives too much protection to machine generated works and grants a monopoly over works that have not been created by a human, and has the potential to be contrary to the theoretical basis of copyright law.

2. United States  

The U.S. position is that of strict human authorship. In Naruto v. The court ruled that non-human beings are not allowed to do so under the suggestion of copyright. Even though this case concerned a monkey selfie, arguments in it have been used to discuss AI. The U.S. Copyright Office further elaborated that one cannot register the work which is not written by a human being. This puts completely autonomous AI in society

3. India’s Position

Now India assumes an intermediate position: a provision is found on computer-generated works, originality, based on the EBC criterion, has no specifics on autonomy with AI. Whether India will lean towards the UK or the strict human authorship standard in the U.S. will be decided through judicial interpretation.  

The lack of explicit legal treatment for AI-generated works creates a significant regulatory gap.

• Ambiguity  

Critical statutory definitions such as author, original and person who causes the work to be created are not defined as it relates to AI. This confusion increases the liability to litigation, inconsistency of contractual practices, and the confusion of legal forums.

• Inconsistent Judicial Application  

In the absence of it being clarified by law, the court could interpret the law, according to their discretion: some might take AI as an advanced tool, others might require explicit human intellectual involvement. This uncertainty compromises the law.

• Innovation Uncertainty  

The companies investing in generating AI technologies are uncertain about their rights enforcing, money-making strategy, and cross-border protection. In case AI outputs are not safeguarded, firms can pay more attention to trade secrets or contracts rather than copyright.

• International Misalignment  

International jurisdiction can be a source of conflict between divergent standards in different jurisdictions. In case India does not respond clearly, with the UK and U.S. setting their course right, India would have to contend with reduced competitiveness, fears of preference of legal venues choice and trade and license problems.

• Concluding Observations  

The primary contradiction of the doctrines consists in the humanistic basis of copyright and the capability of AI to create content on its own. With the current Copyright Act of 1957 in place, the fully autonomous AI content with compare with the originality standards is not expected to pass this test, whereas the human-assisted AI content can be considered as the passing tests according to the extent of the human creative input. The legal status of ownership is a grey area and the moral rights complicate the aspect of attributing it artificially. Finally, the issue is not only technical but philosophical, namely, whether copyright should protect only the creativity of humans or modify it to a world in which creativity is more about machines.

The copyright act of 1957 is primarily the governing law of Indian law. This legislation was designed prior to Artificial Intelligence and it has progressed. They do this on the assumption that the creative works are made by human beings as novels, artistic and music and paintings and novels but it was not originally made by human beings and it has been replaced by AI.

What's the issue?

Section 2(d) of the Copyright Act provides that the author of any work is usually a human being. Nevertheless, nowadays poetry, articles, artwork, music and even legal writings can be created through AI. Humans at times control AI although it functions virtually in some cases. The law does not give any obvious answer: who is the author, who owns the copyright, is AI-generated content worthy of protection? This consequently leads to legal uncertainty as well as some leniency because the law can be interpreted differently by courts in every particular case.

Crucial Policy Aspects (The Need for Reform)- The government must consider a number of crucial factors when revising the law:

(1) Promoting Innovation-One of the leading factors that should be noted when it comes to AI-generated works is the promotion of innovation. Companies spend a lot of money on AI technologies creation and implementation. Unless the works made by AI receive any kind of legal protection, a company is more likely to be less eager to invest into such technologies because of the absence of incentives and prospects of getting any returns. This may eventually slack technological advancement and innovation. Consequently, offering certain protection to the AI-created works could help to secure further investments, as well as contribute to the development of the AI.

(2) Preserving Human Ingenuity-Conservation of human ingenuity is also a core aim of the copyright law, which is chiefly aimed at safeguarding and compensating human ingenuity. When AI-generated content receives equal protection as the works of a human being, it could put writers, musicians, and artists in the disadvantaged situation by diminishing the worth in a human endeavour and originality. Also, AI prevalence may later weaken the appreciation of real creative expression as a result of surplus supply of content of poor quality or mass products in the market. Hence, the legislation should make sure that the human creators are not shifted back to the focal range of copyright protection.

(3) Preventing Monopolization of Machine Outputs

The subject of preventing AI outputs with machines being monopolized is also a valuable point in question in relation to AI and copyright legislation. With complete copyright protection on AI-generated content, the big technological firms might have access to huge amounts of AI-generated content and therefore monopolize in the market. This might cause insufficient competition and small access to knowledge and information. The copyright law ought therefore to be carefully designed in such a way that it does not make companies subdue and monopolize purely machine-generated material.

(4) Aligning with International Standards

International standards conformity is highly crucial in addressing the dilemma that AI has posed and copyright law. The problems similar to AI-generated works are actively discussable in such countries as the United Kingdom, the United States, and the members of the European Union. In this respect, India must ensure that its national laws are competitive on the global basis since they independently are supposed to ratify international conventions on copyright and develop the environment in which foreign investors will feel motivated. A moderate and visionary approach will help India to be a player in the transforming international environment in the area of intellectual property law.

What Could a Balanced Reform Look Like?

Here are some practical reform suggestions explained simply:

1. Amend Section 2(d) – Clarify Authorship of AI-Assisted Works

This legislation may be sensible to explain that in case a human being enters AI as an instrument and comes up with creative decisions, the human being is to be the writer. Considering the above as an example, when a lawyer has made use of AI in drafting a document and the same is edited and altered by the lawyer, the ownership of the copyright should be that of the lawyer. This has humans as the centre of copyright.

2. Distinguish Between AI-Assisted and AI-Autonomous Works 

The law needs to be able to distinguish texts that are AI-assisted and those that are AI-autonomous. The AI-assisted works that required human intervention and the help of AI would fall under the normal copyright regulations. Autonomous works produced by AI and having little or no human creativity can be assigned different (or less) protection.

3. Limited-Duration Protection for Purely AI-Generated Works

As a rule, in India, copyright has the span of the life of the author plus 60 years. In the case of the purely AI-generated productions, the law might offer them fewer protection periods, i.e. 5-10 years long, or limited economic rights only. The given method stimulates innovation and avoids monopolies in the long term.

4. Mandatory Disclosure of AI Involvement

The legislation may force the creators to specify the usage of AI and indicate whether the piece of work is AI-assisted or AI-generated. This facilitates consumer awareness, fair competition and transparency. This needs a middle way since excessive protection will make it hard to eliminate monopolies whereas insufficient protection will increase stagnation in innovation and lack of understanding possibly creates confusion in laws and courtroom battles. A compromise resolution would safeguard human inventors, foster AI development, curb ill usage, preserve the popularity of information to the populace, and be compatible with international norms.

Authorship and ownership of copyright under the Copyright act 1957 be vested in human agency. The act does not acknowledge or exclude Ai- generated works and this puts a big loophole in regulations. Court cases like Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak highlights the aspect of creativity that is anchored on human intellect. Comparison shows that the statutory attribution model developed in the UK has divergent approaches with the strict human authorship doctrine of the U.S. India has to explain its stand by amendment or interpretation by the legal court. An implicit system that differentiates between AI-assisted and entirely autonomous outputs would be predictable and at the same time establish normative bases. Finally, the regulatory vacuum can destroy innovation, provoke ownership controversies, and erode the intellectual property system in post-artificial intelligence India, unless filled.

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3. Riya Dhyani, Copyright Protection for AI-Generated Works: A Critical Analysis (Himachal Pradesh National Law University, Tech. Rep., July 31, 2025).

4. Adv. Shubhika Pant & Adv. Ashutosh Kumar Pandey, Copyright Protection for AI-Generated Works: Legal Gaps and Future Solutions, 7 Indian Journal of Law & Legal Research 2660 (2025). 

5. Simran Gahlot, The Impact of Generative AI on Copyright Law in India: Who Owns AI-Created Works, 5 Ind. J. Integrated Res. L. 1909 (2025). 

6. Gahlot, The Impact of Generative AI on Copyright Law in India: Who Owns AI-Created Works, 5 Ind. J. I on Integrated Res. L. 1909 (Simran 025). 

7. Zarya of the Dawn, Registration Decision (U.S. Copyright Office Feb. 21, 2023), https://www.copyright.gov/docs/zarya-of-the-dawn.pdf.

8. University of London Press Ltd. v. University Tutorial Press Ltd., [1916] 2 Ch. 601 (Ch.). 

9. Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, (2008) 1 SCC 1 (India). 

10. Eastern Book Co. v. D.B. Modak, (2008) 1 S.C.C. 1 (India). 

11. Naruto v. Slater, 888 F.3d 418 (9th Cir. 2018).