Human Creative Control as a Legal Threshold for Copyright Protection in AI-Assisted Works

Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly embedded in creative processes across literature, music, visual arts, and software development, challenging long-standing assumptions about authorship and originality. At a broad level, this technological shift has prompted renewed legal debate over the foundations of copyright law, particularly the requirement that protected works reflect human intellectual effort rather than purely mechanical generation. Jurisdictions worldwide are grappling with how to accommodate AI-assisted creation without undermining core copyright principles or stifling innovation. This article examines human creative control as a defining legal threshold for copyright protection in AI-assisted works. It situates the discussion within traditional doctrines of originality, authorship, and fixation, tracing how courts and policymakers have historically linked copyright eligibility to demonstrable human choice, judgment, and expressive intent. Against this backdrop, the analysis explores emerging models of AI-assisted creativity, ranging from tools that merely enhance human expression to systems capable of autonomously generating expressive content. The article narrows its focus to the legal significance of creative control exercised before, during, and after the use of AI systems. It evaluates factors such as prompt design, parameter selection, curatorial decision-making, and post-generation modification as potential indicators of human authorship. By comparing evolving regulatory approaches and judicial reasoning, the article argues that copyright protection should hinge not on the presence of AI, but on whether a human meaningfully controls the creative process and bears responsibility for the expressive outcome. This framework offers a principled path for preserving copyright’s human-centered foundation while adapting to AI-augmented creativity. It contributes to ongoing debates by proposing a balanced doctrinal standard capable of guiding courts, creators, and policymakers amid accelerating technological change globally today.