AI copyright: Who owns content created by machines?

When a machine writes an article, who owns it? That’s the core question behind AI copyright, the legal and ethical debate over whether content generated by artificial intelligence can be protected by copyright law. Also known as machine-generated content copyright, it’s not just a tech issue—it’s a rewrite of centuries-old rules about who gets to claim authorship. Wikipedia, which relies on human-written, verifiable sources, has no clear policy for AI-generated text. But as more editors use tools like ChatGPT to draft summaries, the line between help and hoax is blurring. If an AI writes a paragraph based on a news article, is that a summary—or a violation of copyright? And if someone copies that AI output into Wikipedia, who’s responsible?

Related to this are copyright law, the set of legal rules that determine who can reproduce, distribute, or adapt creative works, and Wikipedia editing, the process of collaboratively building and refining articles using reliable, published sources. Wikipedia’s rules demand that every claim be backed by a published, verifiable source. But AI tools don’t cite—they generate. That’s why Wikipedia bans preprints and requires peer-reviewed journals. The same logic applies here: if an AI spins up text without a traceable origin, it’s not reliable. And if that text copies protected material, it could be infringing. This isn’t theoretical. In 2023, a Wikipedia editor was blocked after pasting AI-written content into a biography. The community didn’t just reject it—they flagged it as a potential copyright violation.

Then there’s AI and intellectual property, the broader system of laws and norms governing ownership of creations made with or by artificial intelligence. Courts in the U.S. and EU have ruled that copyright only applies to human authors. That means AI can’t own what it creates. But what if a human edits and shapes the output? Is that enough? Wikipedia’s community has no clear answer yet, but editors are testing boundaries. Some use AI to draft outlines, then rewrite everything in their own words. Others avoid it entirely, fearing their edits will be reverted—or worse, lead to legal trouble. The real tension isn’t between humans and machines. It’s between transparency and convenience. If you use AI to save time, are you helping knowledge grow—or just hiding where it came from?

What you’ll find in the posts below aren’t abstract debates. They’re real cases: how editors handle AI drafts, how news corrections ripple through Wikipedia, how tools like edit filters catch suspicious changes, and how the community decides what counts as trustworthy. This isn’t about banning AI. It’s about protecting the integrity of knowledge. If we can’t trace where information comes from, we can’t trust it. And if we can’t trust it, Wikipedia loses its reason for existing.