In the EU, AI-generated content usually has no copyright
A post made the rounds in the tech world this week. Content created entirely by AI does not fall under copyright in the EU. No human creative input, no protected work. I read news like this as an entrepreneur would. What counts for you is what it means for your logo, your website copy and your product images.
What the EU line actually says
Copyright only comes into being when a person makes creative choices. That is the core of it. Type in a prompt, take the output exactly as it comes out, and you probably hold nothing you can protect.
The point got wide attention through Hacker News (AI). The reasoning is short: without demonstrable human input, no protected work is created.
This is not a new law. It is the way copyright has always worked, applied to a new piece of equipment.
What this does to your logo and your copy
Having a logo made with AI is fine. But if you pull the logo straight out of the model and do nothing else with it, the shop down the road can put it on their van tomorrow. Copyright gives you nothing to say about it.
Copy works the same way. A hundred webshops asking the same model the same question get back roughly the same paragraphs. None of those hundred has any claim on them.
For a lot of your work that hardly matters. For the face of your business it does. Your name, your logo, your house style: that is where you want to know this.
I treat AI as a colleague, not as the last step
I use AI for the heavy groundwork. Twenty directions for a wordmark. A first draft of a page. A rough version of a manual. Then your part starts. You pick, you cut, you rewrite, you put your own story into it. Those choices are what make the work yours.
Keep the trail. Your sketches, your notes, your intermediate versions, the mail where you told your designer what had to change. If anyone ever argues about who made what, that trail shows a human was at the wheel.
It costs you almost no time. One folder per project is enough.
What you can do with this tomorrow
- Go through your house style. If your logo came straight out of an AI model, do a real round over it yourself or with a designer. Write down what you changed and why.
- Register your name and your logo. Trademark law protects your brand even where copyright does not. In the Netherlands and Belgium that runs through the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property. It sits apart from this discussion and covers exactly the part where copying hurts.
- Put it in your agreements. Ask freelancers and agencies how they use AI and what they made themselves. One paragraph in the quote will do.
I would not lose sleep over this. AI is still the fastest piece of equipment you have to get from nothing to something. Just make sure a person goes over it afterwards. That person is you.
Frequently asked questions
Can a competitor simply take my AI-written copy?
If that copy comes straight out of a model and you did nothing to it, you probably have no copyright to lean on. If you rewrote it, restructured it and added your own knowledge, the picture changes. That is exactly why I always put a human round over AI work.
So my AI logo has no protection at all?
Probably not through copyright. Through trademark law it does. You register your name and your logo with the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property and get the exclusive right to use them in your field. For most business owners that is the route that really matters.
How much do I have to change before it counts as my work?
There is no fixed number for that. It is about creative choices you can show: what you picked, what you threw away, what you added yourself. The more of your own hand is in it, the stronger you stand. Keep your intermediate versions and you always have that story ready.
