What I learned about AI and copyright in June

I spent time last week at the Academy for Virtual Teaching, less a presentation than a real conversation, and most of it centered on what to watch for with AI right now. AVT (https://www.academyforvirtualteaching.com/) has genuinely useful resources for its members. If you teach in any capacity, it’s worth a look. I’m planning to go back later this summer or early fall.

The part of the conversation that ran longest was copyright, because the legal picture is moving fast and it affects anyone using these tools to make things. Here’s where things actually stand, as of this week. I checked each of these against primary sources before sending them to you.

Settled: pure AI output isn’t copyrightable. The Supreme Court denied cert in Thaler v. Perlmutter on March 2, which lets stand the rule that a work needs a human hand to be copyrighted. Your creative choices are what protect the work, not the tool you used to make it. Read more: https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2026/03/us-supreme-court-declines-to-consider-whether-ai-alone-can-create-copyrighted-works

Settled: the prompt alone doesn’t make you the author. The Copyright Office said as much in its January 2025 report. Prompts convey ideas, and ideas aren’t protectable. Your selection, arrangement, and edits are what you actually own. Read the report: https://www.copyright.gov/ai/

Unsettled: training on copyrighted work. Two courts have called training on legally acquired books “transformative” fair use. Pirating those same books is a different question entirely, and courts are treating it that way. Anthropic settled with a group of authors for $1.5 billion, roughly $3,000 per book. Meta won its case on the facts, but the judge’s opinion warned that training without permission will likely be illegal in many other circumstances. Read the analysis: https://www.jw.com/news/insights-kadrey-meta-bartz-anthropic-ai-copyright/

Passed: the TAKE IT DOWN Act, April 2025. It criminalizes non-consensual intimate imagery, including AI deepfakes, and requires platforms to remove it quickly.

Pending: the NO FAKES Act. It would create a right against AI clones of your voice and likeness. The Senate Judiciary Committee is considering it this year. It’s contested, critics worry it could also suppress satire and commentary. Read the review: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/artificial-intelligence-copyright-and-fight-user-rights-2025-review

Pending: California AB 412. It would require AI developers to disclose the copyrighted works used in training data, the transparency creatives have been asking for.

On the docket this fall:

Andersen v. Stability AI, jury trial starts September 8, 2026 (confirmed). Visual artists against an image generator, testing whether the model itself is an infringing copy. First US AI copyright jury trial, and the one that speaks most directly to image tools. Case overview: https://jipel.law.nyu.edu/andersen-v-stability-ai-the-landmark-case-unpacking-the-copyright-risks-of-ai-image-generators/ Litigation tracker: https://axis-intelligence.com/ai-copyright-lawsuits-status-tracker/

Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence, Third Circuit appeal, decision expected fall 2026. The first appellate ruling on whether AI training is fair use. Not about creative work directly, but the reasoning will shape every case behind it. Read more: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/music-piracy-ai-lawsuits-top-2026-copyright-litigation-calendar

Getty v. Stability AI (US), next conference November 5, 2026. Still in discovery. Getty won on narrow trademark grounds in the UK but dropped the main training claim there. The US case is the one that matters. Litigation tracker: https://axis-intelligence.com/ai-copyright-lawsuits-status-tracker/

Disney and Universal v. Midjourney, discovery runs through August 2026. The first major Hollywood studios in the AI image fight. No verdict this year, but motions are expected late 2026. 2026 update: https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publications/ce8eaa5f/ai-in-litigation-series-an-update-on-ai-copyright-cases-in-2026

I’ll keep tracking these as they move. If you only remember one thing from this post: your hand on the work is still what protects it, and that hasn’t changed no matter how many lawsuits are in progress.