Passing on rights in AI output
Nobody can grant more rights than they hold. Anyone passing AI output to clients while warranting rights that may never have arisen in the output answers for the warranty.
Two questions about AI output are answered elsewhere. Whether any protected right arises at all is covered under AI-generated content, and what the providers’ terms say about it under rights in inputs and outputs. That leaves the third question, the costliest one in practice. What can you promise your own client?
Checking the chain
Step 1: Establish origin
Which parts of the work came from AI, which from people, and how substantial was the creative contribution?
Step 2: Determine the position
Where does a protected right exist and where not, and which rights has the tool provider reserved?
Step 3: Adjust the promises
Limit the warranties in the client contract to what can actually be granted, and cut the indemnities to match.
Step 4: Settle labelling
Decide which outputs are labelled, and design the label so that it serves its purpose.
Step 5: Secure the evidence
Record which tool was used when and what checking took place. Without that record a defence is difficult.
Where it goes wrong most often
- Agency contracts with the usual warranty of freedom from third party rights
- Software projects into which suggestions from coding assistants have flowed
- Trade mark and design applications for signs that came out of a model
- Imagery with identifiable people or identifiable third party works in the result
- Tender procedures demanding transferable rights in the entire deliverable
What we do
We review your client contracts for promises you cannot keep, draft alternatives that hold, and set up the documentation so that your own contribution can be evidenced later. For tenders we settle beforehand whether the required legal position is attainable at all.
AI output in client work?
We check what you can promise and rewrite the rest.
Have the contracts reviewedFrequently asked questions
What can we actually promise our clients?
You can promise what is genuinely in your hands: that no third party rights are known to you, that a check was carried out, that rights in your own contributions are granted. An unqualified warranty that the output is free of third party rights goes beyond that, and it is the point at which things get expensive later.
Do we have to disclose that AI was involved?
For certain content, in particular artificially generated or manipulated image, audio and video material, the AI Act provides for transparency duties. Independently of that, a duty can follow from the contract or from unfair competition law where an impression of human authorship is created and that matters to the client's decision.
What about public tenders?
Tender documents frequently require the grant of comprehensive, transferable rights of use. Where parts of the work were produced with AI, the required legal position may not exist at all. That belongs checked before the bid, not after the award.