AI, Photography, And The Law: Who Owns The Rights To Machine-Generated Images?

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer confined to the world of science fiction or high-tech laboratories; it has slipped quietly into everyday life, transforming industries into ways that are both fascinating and unsettling. Photography is one of the most striking examples. What once required a camera, a subject, and a skilled eye can now be produced at the click of a button. With nothing more than a line of text, AI can conjure a portrait, a cityscape, or even a work of abstract art, blurring the boundary between traditional craftsmanship and machine-driven creativity.

For artists and photographers, this is both thrilling and disconcerting. AI offers new tools for expression, yet it also raises troubling questions. If a machine produces an image, who can truly call themselves its author? Is it the individual who typed the prompt, the developers who built the software, or does the machine itself deserve recognition?

Around the world, lawmakers are beginning to wrestle with these dilemmas. In the United States, regulators insist that copyright must remain rooted in human authorship. In the United Kingdom, the law has long provided for computergenerated works, a remarkably prescient step taken decades before today's debate. Nigeria, meanwhile, has recently overhauled its copyright regime, taking a more traditional stance that places human creativity at the heart of ownership. This article explores Nigeria's position on AI-generated photography within this wider global conversation.

Intellectual Property and Machine-Generated Images in Nigeria

In Nigeria, copyright is governed by the Copyright Act 2022 (“the Act”), which like most systems around the world places human creativity at its core. To qualify for protection, a work must originate from a human author. This principle works well for traditional creations, but it becomes less clear when applied to images produced by AI. Can something generated by a machine, with little or no human input, truly fit within this human-centered framework?

The Act is explicit in its approach. Section 28 of the Act states that copyright vests initially in the “author, ” unless the parties agree otherwise. For photographs, that author is defined as the person who actually took the picture. The reasoning is straightforward: authorship flows from human choices the framing, lighting, timing, and artistic vision that give a photograph its character. The law ensures that photographers are recognized as artists, not mere technicians, and protects their work from unauthorized copying, reproduction, or commercial exploitation.

This certainty, however, begins to falter when applied to AI. With no identifiable human photographer pressing the shutter or making creative decisions, the Act offers no clear answer. As such, Nigeria's copyright framework, while robust for traditional works, leaves a significant gap when it comes to machinegenerated images. The law has yet to fully address the complex questions posed by artificial intelligence in creative production.

The Copyrightability of AI Outputs: Statutory and Judicial Approaches in the UK and US

Notably, the U.S copyright office also maintained that works eligible for copyright must be produced by a human author and refused to register works produced by a machine without any creative contribution by a human. This position was affirmed by the United States District Court in Thaler v. Perlmutter. In the civil action, the Plaintiff, a computer scientist, sought to test the boundaries of copyright law through his creation of an artificial intelligence system known as the “Creativity Machine. ” The system autonomously generated an artwork entitled A Recent Entrance to Paradise.

When applying for copyright registration, Dr. Thaler listed the Creativity Machine as the sole author, naming himself only as the owner. The Copyright Office refused the application, relying on its longstanding policy that only works authored by human beings are eligible for copyright protection. Dr. Thaler sought judicial review before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that he should be recognized as the owner under the “work made for hire” doctrine or, alternatively, as the author by virtue of creating and using the AI. The court rejected both arguments, holding that human authorship is a fundamental requirement of the Copyright Act of 1976 and noting that Thaler had waived his alternative claim.

On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed, concluding that copyright law requires human authorship and that the Copyright Office was correct to deny registration. The court explained: By its plain text, the 1976 Act . . . requires a copyrightable work to have an originator with the capacity for intellectual, creative, or artistic labor. Must that originator be a human being to claim copyright protection? The answer is “yes. ”

In January 2025, the US Copyright Office issued the second part of its Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Report, addressing the copyright status of works created with the assistance of AI. The key message is that copyright remains rooted in human authorship: protection applies only where a human has made a sufficiently creative contribution, and each case must be assessed on its facts. Simply, copyright protects human creativity, not machine output. However, where a human meaningfully contributes to a work that involves AI, those contributions can still be protected.

The Office distinguishes between AI as a tool and AI as a substitute for human creativity. If AI is used in the same way one might use a camera or editing software supporting but not replacing human authorship, then the resulting work may qualify for protection. By contrast, output generated wholly by AI, or those selected from a list of AI-created options without further human input, are not copyrightable.

Using AI in the creative process is, contextually, rather like picking up a paintbrush, a camera, or even Photoshop. When you are guiding the tool, shaping the outcome and adding expressive input, you may still be treated as the author. But if the machine does all the work, with you doing little more than pressing “generate, ” the law does not recognize copyright in that output.

The Copyright Office offered some helpful illustrations:

• Typing a prompt into an AI system and accepting the image it produces does not create copyright because no human creativity has gone in.
• Simply picking your favorite from a batch of AI outputs fares no better; that act alone is likened to choosing a pebble from the beach.
• By contrast, if you sketch something by hand and later use AI to color or enhance it, your human originality is clear and remains protectable.
• Equally, if you rework AI-generated material—say by editing, arranging or weaving it into a collage with your own words or images—the human input is safeguarded, even if the AI parts alone would not be.

In short, purely machine-made works sit outside copyright. But in hybrid works, where human effort is visible, meaningful, and expressive, the US copyright law will continue to protect the human author. This ensures that, even in the age of AI, the creative spark of the individual remains central.

The United Kingdom's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) 1988 adopts a strikingly dual approach to authorship. On the one hand, it places traditional human creativity firmly at the center of copyright, rewarding genuine human expression with the full measure of protection. On the other, it makes provision for works generated by computers with limited human input, granting them a shorter term of protection.

Section 9(3) of the CDPA is particularly significant. It provides that:

“In the case of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work which is computer-generated, the author shall be taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken. ”

In this way, the law preserves the value of human authorship while simultaneously recognizing that works may emerge from machine processes, even without a direct human creator. Remarkably, the provision was made more than three decades ago before the rise of generative AI. It anticipated many of the questions now at the center of modern copyright debates and continues to serve as a foundation for discussions about authorship in the AI era.

Legal Precedents and Emerging Frameworks in Nigeria

The Nigerian Copyright Act is firmly grounded in human authorship, granting copyright to identifiable authors of specific works such as photographs, audiovisual content, and sound recordings. However, this human-centered framework struggles to accommodate creations generated largely by artificial intelligence. With AI systems producing images, music, and text, the question of “who owns what” has become increasingly complex.

To bridge this gap, several reforms have been proposed. These include dual authorship, where both the AI developer and the user guiding the tool are recognized as co-authors; the expansion of intellectual property categories to cover machine-generated works; and the creation of AI-specific regulations that fairly balance the interests of developers, users, and original creators whose works may have trained the AI. Moreover, following the AI guidance by the U.S office which gives room for AI-assisted creations to be copyrighted to the extent of human contribution, Nigeria can equally adopt this. The current copyright regime can be amended to allow registration of AI-assisted creations to the extent of human input as the Act provided that work is eligible for copyright if some effort has been expended on making the work, to give it an original character.

Globally, similar debates are unfolding. In the European Union, for example, copyright remains tied to human authorship, yet policymakers are now exploring ways to recognize AI-assisted creativity. For Nigeria, meaningful reforms may involve dataset transparency, watermarking AI outputs, compensation schemes for original creators, and ultimately amending the Copyright Act to reflect today's technological realities guided by future judicial precedents.

Implications for Photographers and Artists in Nigeria

The rise of AI-generated images has significant implications for photographers and artists in Nigeria. On one hand, AI tools can enhance creativity, streamline workflows, and provide new opportunities for artistic expression. On the other hand, the legal uncertainties surrounding ownership and copyright may pose challenges for professionals who rely on their work for income and recognition.

Photographers and artists must navigate this evolving landscape, stay informed about legal developments and advocate for policies that protect their rights. Photographers should take proactive steps to assess risks related to their Intellectual property and protect it. They can do this by searching for their work in compiled data set or large-scale data lake. They should also monitor both digital and social platforms for the appearance of their work.

Stakeholders need to be up to date with new developments in Copyright regulation with respect to generative AI training. Collaborations between the tech industry, legal experts, and creative communities are essential to ensure that the benefits of AI are balanced with the protection of intellectual property rights.

Establishing Ownership: Steps for Users to Claim Rights to AI-Generated Images

The question of ownership becomes sharper when considering AI-generated images. The US Copyright Office has made its stance clear: If your creative input was as minimal as typing "create a picture of me in Isi-Agu attire, " don't expect to own the copyright. In such cases, the lack of substantial human artistry means the image essentially belongs to ‘nobody' .

But fear not, aspiring AI-art moguls! There is a path to ownership: meticulous documentation. To stake a claim in the wild frontier of AI-generated imagery, users must become diligent archivists of their own creativity. The golden ticket to copyright ownership lies in meticulously documenting the ideas, detailed prompts, and artistic direction fed into the AI, along with the iterative refinements that shape the final output. Think of it as leaving a breadcrumb trail of your creative genius: the more deliberate and distinctive your input, the stronger your case when copyright questions come knocking.

Think of it like this: The more detailed your vision - descriptions, tweaks, refinements, and artistic nudges, the stronger your case when copyright claims come knocking. Did you meticulously guide the AI like a director coaching a Nollywood-worthy performance? Did you fine-tune the output until they matched the masterpiece in your creative mind? That's the kind of creative heavy lifting that could make the image legally yours.

So, the best move? Keep a robust record of your creative contributions. Document your prompts, vivid descriptions, clever tweaks, painstaking revisions, and artistic choices. That way, when the inevitable debate arises over who truly authored the image, you'll have the receipts and a paper trail that screams, “Yes, and here's the proof!”

Conclusion

For Nigeria to utilize the full potential of this AI technology, it must bring forth forward-thinking legal frameworks while striking a delicate balance between encouraging AI's creative potential and ensuring human contributors retain their rightful stake in the process. The way forward? Collaboration, clarity, and policies that protect both progress and the people behind it. As generative AIs are trained not only to reproduce and internalize elements from already existing works but to have the capacity to create new works similar to the data it was trained with. Recognizing the fact that AIs can produce an entirely new work gives more reason why expanding the relevant framework to cover AI generated.

To determine who owns the right to machine generated images there is need to recognize the three parties who played a part in the outcome of these works. Therefore, it would be best to accord each party right to their contribution just like in the case of AI-assisted creations where the US copyright office registers the extent of the human input in such works. This should be applied to every other scenario and protect the intellectual property of the developer, the Machine and the User to the extent they have contributed while disclaiming and identifying the input of the other parties.

References

1. The Nigerian Copyright Act 2022
2. The United States Copyright Act 1976
3. The United Kingdom Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) 1988
4. The USCO, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Report, Part I & 11
5. 5. Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 22-CV-384-1564-BAH United States District Court for the District of Columbia [2023]
6. https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-1-Digital-Replicas-Report.pdf Accessed on 24th August 2025
7. 7. https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf? _hsenc=p2ANqtz-8zrtvsK8MTJtXf92i0nffCEn2EVWSkEk_jlAhEMzj1USb7FTwS4xCOJigYJsus6bMHZw4Y Accessed on 24th August 2025.
8. https://www.cohorte.co/blog/who-owns-an-ai-generated-image Accessed on 24th February 2025.
9. Lawyer Explains Who Owns the Copyright to AI Images - Attorney Aaron Hall Accessed on 24th February 2025.
10. Artificial Intelligence Technology in Photography and Future Challenges and Reflections by Yongcai Chen Anhui, Institute of Information Technology, Wuhu City, Anhui Province, China
11. The impact of artificial intelligence on photography - Photography Magazine | The Photography Daily, https://thephotographydaily.com/ai-photography/ accessed 30th July 2025

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