The United States Copyright Office, a federal organization and a taxpayer-funded public good founded in 1897, has issued formal guidance on the issue of AI-generated content. A document posted in January states that works lacking human authorship will not be protected by U.S. copyright. However, the requisite level of creativity required to fulfill that criteria is extremely low. The document was also reported on by GamesIndustry.biz.More than 10,000 comments from the public contributed to the U.S. Copyright Offices decision on copyrightability of AI-generated works, and the executive summary makes it clear that it considered all viewpoints before issuing its guidance:As a matter of policy, some argued that extending protection to materials created bygenerative AI would encourage the creation of more works of authorship, furthering progressin culture and knowledge to the benefit of the public. The Office also heard concerns that anincreased proliferation of AI-generated outputs would undermine incentives for humans tocreate.While recognizing that copyrightability is determined on a case-by-case basis, [] the Office sets out the legal principles that govern the analysis and assesses their application to AI-generated content.In its conclusions and recommendations, the Office notes that it believes that issues related to AI can be resolved pursuant to existing law, without the need for legislative change. However, it repeatedly stressed that whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. That likely means it will be useful for creatives to be able to show their work, not merely point at the AI black box and the prompt that they gave it. This document is merely the beginning, however, and not the end of whats expected to be a long journey through the U.S. judicial system that will be marked with fractious legal battles.Issues related to the inputs used to create the AI model in the first place meaning whether or not large language models have technically stole from artists by scraping their content from the open web is largely outside the bounds of the document. Nonetheless, the ruling is poised to loom large going forward. The Trump administration recently announced an executive order that aspirationally seeks to expanding government funding for AI technology. The initiative, if funded, is expected to benefit the nations largest and most profitable tech companies. Meanwhile, individual creatives will largely be left to fend for themselves.