Who Owns AI-Generated Works?

In 1837, a strange new process emerged: daguerreotype, a method of creating a permanent photographic image using the ancient camera obscura. Painters who had spent years perfecting their brushstrokes suddenly faced a box that could capture a likeness in minutes. Many dismissed it as a trick, while some declared it the death of art. Behind their outrage was a deep anxiety: if the hand of the artist is absent, who owns the creation?

Nearly two centuries later, that anxiety has returned. Only this time, the hand missing is not replaced by a lens, but by code.

It's no longer news that Artificial Intelligence has gained capability to compose music, paint portraits, write novels, and even draft legal arguments. While AI creations dazzle, it's also disturbing.

Most importantly, one of human questions to ask is who owns AI-generated works?

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To analyse the existing legal framework, Copyright law, born in an age of ink and parchment, never imagined a world where machines could create or worse, think. In Nigeria, as in most countries, the law still clings to the presumption that creativity is human.

Nigeria's Copyright Act of 2022 is clear in one respect: authorship rests with humans. According to Section 5, "Copyright shall be conferred where the author… is an individual… or a body corporate incorporated by or under the laws of Nigeria." This provision echoes global treaties like the Berne Convention and TRIPS Agreement, and presumes originality to be a human affair.

So where does that leave AI? Not a person, not a company—yet undeniably creative. If an AI platform generates a viral Afrobeats track after being prompted by a Nigerian musician, who owns it?

Or when an AI writes a sonnet trained on Shakespeare, guided by a programmer, and prompted by a user, who holds the pen? The coder who built the system? The company that owns it? The individual who typed the words, "write me a love poem"? Or even the deceased Shakespeare?

For now, Nigerian law offers no direct answer.

At the least, United Kingdom's legislation flexibility allows "computer-generated works" where the author is deemed to be "the person making the arrangements." Since Nigeria has not yet stepped into this minefield, the ownership question hangs in the air like smoke.

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But as Nigeria's digital space expands, this silence in the law won't last forever. We already see two kinds of AI creativity emerging.

The first is automation, when a system creates something almost entirely on its own with little or no human input. Picture an AI that keeps generating songs or artwork without anyone doing much more than clicking "compose", "produce", or "generate". A new copyright law may say that such works should not be protected at all since there's no clear "author."

This instance could become a problem—because if no one owns the work, anyone can copy or sell it, which might discourage people or companies from investing in new AI tools. One way forward could be to follow UK's lead and say the rights belong to the person or company that set up the process in the first place.

The second type looks a bit different. Here, the human is actively shaping the output—feeding the AI detailed prompts, editing, remixing, and polishing the results.

Think of a musician who uses AI to draft beats but then adds their own lyrics, or a writer who asks AI for ideas but then crafts a full story around them. In these cases, it feels right to recognize the human as the author, since their creativity guides the machine.

Nigerian law could be updated to make this clear: when people add enough originality, they remain the copyright owners, while the AI is simply treated as a tool. And when that is not there, the ownership resides with the person or company that sets up the process that makes it possible.

If lawmakers take this route, Nigeria could avoid confusion and give creators and investors more confidence.

CONCLUSION.execute()

The debate on who owns AI-generated works cannot be settled now or anytime soon. But instead of leaving everything in a grey zone, the law should spell out who owns what—whether it's an AI-driven project with no human touch or a collaborative effort where human imagination still leads the way.

That clarity will matter, especially as Nigeria grows into a bigger player in the global digital economy.