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U.S. Copyright and AI Content Copyrightability: Key Things to Know

Learn how human involvement impacts copyright eligibility according to the U.S. Copyright Office and what this means for writers, artists, and businesses.

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Introduction

Our text compare tool is a fantastic, lightweight tool that provides plagiarism checks between two documents. Whether you are a student, blogger or publisher, this tool offers a great solution to detect and compare similarities between any two pieces of text. In this article, I will discuss the different ways to use the tool, the primary features of the tool and who this tool is for. There is an FAQ at the bottom if you run into any issues when trying to use the tool.

What makes Originality.ai’s text comparison tool stand out?

Keyword density helper – This tool comes with a built-in keyword density helper in some ways similar to the likes of SurferSEO or MarketMuse the difference being, ours is free! This feature shows the user the frequency of single or two word keywords in a document, meaning you can easily compare an article you have written against a competitor to see the major differences in keyword densities. This is especially useful for SEO’s who are looking to optimize their blog content for search engines and improve the blog’s visibility.

Ways to compare

File compare – Text comparison between files is a breeze with our tool. Simply select the files you would like to compare, hit “Upload” and our tool will automatically insert the content into the text area, then simply hit “Compare” and let our tool show you where the differences in the text are. By uploading a file, you can still check the keyword density in your content.

URL compare

Comparing text between URLs is effortless with our tool. Simply paste the URL you would like to get the content from (in our example we use a fantastic blog post by Sherice Jacob found here) hit “Submit URL” and our tool will automatically retrieve the contents of the page and paste it into the text area, then simply click “Compare” and let our tool highlight the difference between the URLs. This feature is especially useful for checking keyword density between pages!

Simple text compare

You can also easily compare text by copying and pasting it into each field, as demonstrated below.

Features of Originality.ai’s Text Compare Tool

Ease of use

Our text compare tool is created with the user in mind, it is designed to be accessible to everyone. Our tool allows users to upload files or enter a URL to extract text, this along with the lightweight design ensures a seamless experience. The interface is simple and straightforward, making it easy for users to compare text and detect the diff.

Multiple text file format support

Our tool provides support for a variety of different text files and microsoft word formats including pdf file, .docx, .odt, .doc, and .txt, giving users the ability to compare text from different sources with ease. This makes it a great solution for students, bloggers, and publishers who are looking for file comparison in different formats.

Protects intellectual property

Our text comparison tool helps you protect your intellectual property and helps prevent plagiarism. This tool provides an accurate comparison of texts, making it easy to ensure that your work is original and not copied from other sources. Our tool is a valuable resource for anyone looking to maintain the originality of their content.

User Data Privacy

Our text compare tool is secure and protects user data privacy. No data is ever saved to the tool, the users’ text is only scanned and pasted into the tool’s text area. This makes certain that users can use our tool with confidence, knowing their data is safe and secure.

Compatibility

Our text comparison tool is designed to work seamlessly across all size devices, ensuring maximum compatibility no matter your screen size. Whether you are using a large desktop monitor, a small laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, this tool adjusts to your screen size. This means that users can compare texts and detect the diff anywhere without the need for specialized hardware or software. This level of accessibility makes it an ideal solution for students or bloggers who value the originality of their work and need to compare text online anywhere at any time.

In January 2025, the U.S. Copyright Office confirmed that certain types of AI-generated content can be eligible for copyright, causing plenty of content creators and consumers to wonder what the future of AI content may hold.

However, in doing so, they also highlight some important ground rules.

Here, we will break down the recently updated law, helping content creators and consumers understand what it covers and what it doesn’t.

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

  • The U.S. Copyright Office recently confirmed that content created “where AI is used as a tool” can be copyrighted either “in whole or in part.”
  • Simply prompting AI to generate content will typically not suffice for copyright; a clear human contribution to the work is required.
  • Each instance will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, to determine whether the human contribution to the work is adequate and makes it eligible for copyright.

The U.S. Copyright Update in More Detail

Source: U.S. Copyright Office

You can find the full Copyright and Artificial Intelligence document here, but to save you some time, we’ve pulled out some of the most important points below.

On January 29th, 2025, the U.S. Copyright Office released an update to Part 2 of its Artificial Intelligence Report, focusing specifically on Copyrightability, as noted in the U.S. Copyright Office’s news release.

The document is 52 pages long and discusses in great depth the recent steps that the office has taken to tackle the rise of AI-generated content in the last few years, including an overview of its AI initiative.

It also mentions that as part of its Notice of Inquiry (NOI), which was published to obtain public input, it received over 10,000 comments, approximately 50% of which, were specifically responding to the copyrightability of AI. 

Notably, it mentions that the “vast majority” of the responses indicated that if AI was generating the entire work then their comment was that it was “not copyrightable.

Source: U.S. Copyright Office

It is also clear from the document that there are several concerns surrounding the growing reliance on and usage of AI for creative endeavors: 

Many commenters expressed concern about continuing the longstanding and growing use of computer-assisted tools in the creation process.” - U.S. Copyright Office

The Copyright Office noted that generative AI should be used as an assisting tool rather than as a replacement for human creativity.

Source: U.S. Copyright Office

What AI Content Qualifies as Copyrighted (and What Doesn’t)

However, one major question remains: what actually qualifies as copyrightable, and what doesn’t?

The quickest way to capture the key findings of the report is by reviewing the document’s conclusion, where the U.S. Copyright Office states that AI-assisted work can be copyrighted, but outright AI output and “prompts alone” can't.

Source: U.S. Copyright Office

As you can see, there is some important information here, most notably:

  • Prompting alone is “unlikely to satisfy those requirements” for copyright.
  • Outputs can be copyrightable “in whole or in part—where AI is used as a tool”.
  • The copyright office will treat each case on a “case-by-case basis,” to continue adapting to technological advances.

What This Means for Content Creation

For those who use and incorporate AI into the content creation process, are creating high-quality AI-generated content and then spending the time necessary to edit it and tweak it into something entirely unique, this news can be seen as positive. 

The ruling is clear that this only accounts for works that include an adequate level of human contribution such as through creative arrangements and modifications to the generated output.

Further, it describes that just prompting an AI tool isn’t enough.

Will the overall outcome of this report be positive or negative? Only time will tell.

What’s Next For The U.S. Copyright Office and AI?

For content creators concerned about their content getting scraped and used to train AI models, the final part of the U.S. Copyright Office’s examination into copyright and AI is going to aim to address this.

In addition, it will also be looking into licensing and where potential liabilities could be allocated. 

The Future of AI-Generated Content and Copyrights

Although the U.S. Copyright Office’s publication notes that AI tools can be used to create copyrightable works, it’s likely that the discussion around AI and copyright will continue to evolve. 

There are still ongoing OpenAI and ChatGPT lawsuits surrounding content and the U.S. Copyright Office has yet to release the final part of this review.

So, there are still legislative updates to come.

What is certainly clear is that establishing whether or not something is AI-generated is more important than ever.

If you’re looking to review text for potential instances of AI to promote transparency around the content you’re publishing, use the industry-leading Originality.ai AI Detector.

Read more about the latest in AI:

Graeme Whiles

My name is Graeme, a passionate writer with a strong Content Marketing background. Over the last seven years, I have developed an extensive portfolio of SEO Content writing, helping various brands improve their organic traffic, customer experience, and, ultimately, profits!

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to fill out the entire form?

No, that’s one of the benefits, only fill out the areas which you think will be relevant to the prompts you require.

Why is the English so poor for some prompts?

When making the tool we had to make each prompt as general as possible to be able to include every kind of input. Not to worry though ChatGPT is smart and will still understand the prompt.

In The Press

Originality.ai has been featured for its accurate ability to detect GPT-3, Chat GPT and GPT-4 generated content. See some of the coverage below…

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Featured by Leading Publications

Originality.ai did a fantastic job on all three prompts, precisely detecting them as AI-written. Additionally, after I checked with actual human-written textual content, it did determine it as 100% human-generated, which is important.

Vahan Petrosyan

searchenginejournal.com

I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.

Tom Demers

searchengineland.com

After extensive research and testing, we determined Originality.ai to be the most accurate technology.

Rock Content Team

rockcontent.com

Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

Felix Rose-Collins

ranktracker.com

ChatGPT lacks empathy and originality. It’s also recognized as AI-generated content most of the time by plagiarism and AI detectors like Originality.ai

Ashley Stahl

forbes.com

Originality.ai Do give them a shot! 

Sri Krishna

venturebeat.com

For web publishers, Originality.ai will enable you to scan your content seamlessly, see who has checked it previously, and detect if an AI-powered tool was implored.

Industry Trends

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to check for plagiarism?

Tools for conducting a plagiarism check between two documents online are important as it helps to ensure the originality and authenticity of written work. Plagiarism undermines the value of professional and educational institutions, as well as the integrity of the authors who write articles. By checking for plagiarism, you can ensure the work that you produce is original or properly attributed to the original author. This helps prevent the distribution of copied and misrepresented information.

What is Text Comparison?

Text comparison is the process of taking two or more pieces of text and comparing them to see if there are any similarities, differences and/or plagiarism. The objective of a text comparison is to see if one of the texts has been copied or paraphrased from another text. This text compare tool for plagiarism check between two documents has been built to help you streamline that process by finding the discrepancies with ease.

How do Text Comparison Tools Work?

Text comparison tools work by analyzing and comparing the contents of two or more text documents to find similarities and differences between them. This is typically done by breaking the texts down into smaller units such as sentences or phrases, and then calculating a similarity score based on the number of identical or nearly identical units. The comparison may be based on the exact wording of the text, or it may take into account synonyms and other variations in language. The results of the comparison are usually presented in the form of a report or visual representation, highlighting the similarities and differences between the texts.

String comparison is a fundamental operation in text comparison tools that involves comparing two sequences of characters to determine if they are identical or not. This comparison can be done at the character level or at a higher level, such as the word or sentence level.

The most basic form of string comparison is the equality test, where the two strings are compared character by character and a Boolean result indicating whether they are equal or not is returned. More sophisticated string comparison algorithms use heuristics and statistical models to determine the similarity between two strings, even if they are not exactly the same. These algorithms often use techniques such as edit distance, which measures the minimum number of operations (such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions) required to transform one string into another.

Another common technique for string comparison is n-gram analysis, where the strings are divided into overlapping sequences of characters (n-grams) and the frequency of each n-gram is compared between the two strings. This allows for a more nuanced comparison that takes into account partial similarities, rather than just exact matches.

String comparison is a crucial component of text comparison tools, as it forms the basis for determining the similarities and differences between texts. The results of the string comparison can then be used to generate a report or visual representation of the similarities and differences between the texts.

What is Syntax Highlighting?

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that helps to visually distinguish different elements of a code or markup language. It does this by coloring different elements of the code, such as keywords, variables, functions, and operators, based on a predefined set of rules.

The purpose of syntax highlighting is to make the code easier to read and understand, by drawing attention to the different elements and their structure. For example, keywords may be colored in a different hue to emphasize their importance, while comments or strings may be colored differently to distinguish them from the code itself. This helps to make the code more readable, reducing the cognitive load of the reader and making it easier to identify potential syntax errors.

How Can I Conduct a Plagiarism Check between Two Documents Online?

With our tool it’s easy, just enter or upload some text, click on the button “Compare text” and the tool will automatically display the diff between the two texts.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Text Compare Tool?

Using text comparison tools is much easier, more efficient, and more reliable than proofreading a piece of text by hand. Eliminate the risk of human error by using a tool to detect and display the text difference within seconds.

What Files Can You Inspect with This Text Compare Tool?

We have support for the file extensions .pdf, .docx, .odt, .doc and .txt. You can also enter your text or copy and paste text to compare.

Will My Data Be Shared?

There is never any data saved by the tool, when you hit “Upload” we are just scanning the text and pasting it into our text area so with our text compare tool, no data ever enters our servers.

Software License Agreement

Copyright © 2023, Originality.ai

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

  1. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Will My Data Be Shared?

This table below shows a heat map of features on other sites compared to ours as you can see we almost have greens across the board!

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