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Is It Legal to Use AI-Generated Content? 2026 Guide

· 11 min read · BINAI Editorial Team

Is it legal to use AI-generated content?

Yes. Using AI-generated content is legal in the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, including for marketing, social media and products you sell. No general law forbids publishing text, images, video or music made with AI.

What changes is the risk around the content, and it comes from five places: copyright in what you made, copyright in what the AI may have copied, labelling duties, advertising rules and rights over real people's faces and voices. This guide walks through each one as of October 2026, with links to a deeper article for every topic.

One definition first. AI-generated content means text, images, audio or video produced by a generative AI model from a prompt or from other inputs, with or without later human editing. How much human editing there is matters a lot for copyright, as you will see.

Most legal trouble with AI content falls into one of these five questions. The table summarises the position in each region; the sections below explain it.

Question United States European Union United Kingdom
Can I copyright it? Only the human-authored parts; prompts alone are not enough Protection needs human authorship; fully AI content is not protected Law still protects "computer-generated works", but the government proposes removing that
Can I use it commercially? Yes, subject to the AI tool's terms Yes, subject to the AI tool's terms Yes, subject to the AI tool's terms
Could it infringe someone else's rights? Yes, if the output copies protected work Yes; a German court found a chatbot's output of song lyrics infringing Yes; Getty won narrow trademark claims over watermarks in early Stable Diffusion outputs
Must I label it? No general federal law; platform rules apply Deepfakes must be disclosed (AI Act, Article 50) No general law; platform rules apply
Can I use a real person's face or voice? Only with consent, under state publicity laws and federal deepfake rules Only with consent, under image rights and the GDPR Passing off and new criminal offences limit it

Can you copyright AI-generated content?

Only partly. The US Copyright Office's report on copyrightability, published on 29 January 2025, concluded that AI outputs "can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements". Your own text, your edits, and your selection and arrangement of AI material can be protected. A prompt on its own is not enough.

The courts agree. In Thaler v. Perlmutter, the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in March 2025 that copyright requires a human author, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on 2 March 2026. A separate case, Allen v. Perlmutter, asks whether hundreds of detailed Midjourney prompts make someone an author; it was still pending in Colorado at our last check.

In Europe, the European Parliament's resolution of 10 March 2026 states that content fully generated by AI that does not meet the criteria for protection should stay unprotected. The UK is moving the same way: its March 2026 report proposes removing the special protection for computer-generated works. Our full guide explains whether AI-generated content is copyrighted and how to keep the parts you can protect.

Why it matters for a business: if a logo, mascot or ad is purely AI-generated, a competitor may be free to copy it. Add real human creative work to anything you need to defend.

Can you use AI-generated content commercially?

Yes, as long as you follow the terms of the tool you used. The main providers give users rights in their outputs:

  • OpenAI says that, as between you and OpenAI, you "own the Output" and it assigns you its rights in it, but warns that other users may receive similar output.
  • Google says that when its services let you generate original content, "Google won't claim ownership over that content".
  • Midjourney says you own the assets you create, but a company with more than $1,000,000 a year in revenue must be on a Pro or Mega plan to own them.
  • Adobe says outputs from Firefly features without the beta label can be used commercially.

Two caveats apply everywhere. First, "you own the output" is a contract between you and the provider; it cannot give you copyright the law does not recognise. Second, none of these terms protect you if the output copies someone else's work. Our guide on using AI-generated images commercially compares the main tools in detail.

Can AI content infringe someone else's copyright?

Yes. If an output reproduces a protected song, character, photo or text, publishing it can expose you to an infringement claim, even though an AI made it. The tools' own terms warn you of this: they give you their rights in the output, not anyone else's.

The courts are dealing with two separate questions. The first is training. In the US, the Anthropic books case found training on books fair use but storing pirated copies not, and settled for $1.5 billion. On 29 September 2026 the Third Circuit ruled that copying Westlaw headnotes to train a non-generative legal research tool was not fair use, while leaving the generative AI questions open. In the UK, the High Court ruled in November 2025 that the Stable Diffusion model was not an "infringing copy" of Getty's images.

The second question is outputs, and it matters more to you. In November 2025 the Munich Regional Court held that OpenAI's models had memorised song lyrics and that reproducing them in chatbot outputs infringed copyright. In the US, Disney and Universal sued Midjourney in June 2025 over images of characters like Darth Vader and Shrek.

The practical rule: do not prompt for named characters, artists' styles that copy specific works, brand logos or song lyrics, and check what comes out. Music is a special case on video platforms; see whether you can use AI music on YouTube.

Do you have to label AI-generated content?

In the EU, sometimes. Article 50 of the EU AI Act has applied since 2 August 2026, and the Digital Omnibus on AI did not delay it. It requires a deployer, meaning anyone using an AI system other than for purely personal activity, to disclose deepfakes: AI-generated or manipulated image, audio or video that resembles real people, objects, places or events and "would falsely appear to a person to be authentic or truthful". For evidently artistic, satirical or fictional work, the duty is lighter: disclose that the content was generated, in a way that does not spoil it.

AI tool providers carry a separate duty to mark outputs in a machine-readable way. Systems already on the market before 2 August 2026 have until 2 December 2026. Fines for breaching Article 50 reach €15 million or 3% of worldwide turnover, whichever is higher, with the lower figure applying to small and medium-sized businesses. Our guide to EU AI Act content labelling covers the details.

Outside the EU, platforms set the rules. YouTube requires creators to disclose realistic content that is meaningfully altered or synthetic, such as making a real person appear to say something they did not, and can apply a label itself or remove content for creators who repeatedly do not disclose. See when you have to disclose AI content on each platform.

What are the rules for AI in ads, reviews and endorsements?

Advertising law applies to AI exactly as it applies to anything else: an ad must not mislead. In the US, the FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, in force since 21 October 2024, covers reviews and testimonials that claim to come from someone who does not exist, "such as AI-generated fake reviews", and lets the FTC seek civil penalties against knowing violators.

The FTC's guidance says the rule has no blanket ban on AI avatars in marketing, but their use can still be deceptive under the FTC Act. New York has gone further: since June 2026, ads that use a "synthetic performer", an AI-generated person, must disclose it, with penalties of $1,000 for a first violation and $5,000 for later ones.

So an AI presenter is fine; an AI "customer" with a fake testimonial is not. Read the FTC rules on AI ads, endorsements and reviews before running AI UGC-style ads.

Only with their permission, in nearly every commercial context. In the US, state right of publicity laws protect identity: California's Civil Code § 3344 makes anyone who knowingly uses another person's name, voice, photograph or likeness in advertising without consent liable for at least $750 or actual damages. Tennessee's ELVIS Act, in force since July 2024, added voice protection aimed at AI cloning.

Federal law now targets the worst abuse. The TAKE IT DOWN Act criminalises publishing non-consensual intimate images, including AI "digital forgeries", and since 19 May 2026 covered platforms must remove them within 48 hours of a valid request. The NO FAKES Act, which would create a federal right over your voice and likeness, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2026 but is not law as of October 2026.

In the EU, national image rights such as § 22 of Germany's KUG require consent to publish someone's likeness, and France punishes publishing an AI montage of a person without consent when its artificial nature is not obvious or stated. The UK has no general image right, but celebrities have won "false endorsement" claims through passing off, and since 6 February 2026 creating a sexually explicit deepfake of an adult without consent is a crime. Our full guide covers whether AI face swap is legal.

A pre-publish legal checklist for AI content

Run through these steps before any AI content goes live:

  1. Check the tool's terms. Confirm your plan allows commercial use and that you meet any revenue or plan conditions.
  2. Search for borrowed material. Look for characters, logos, recognisable artworks, lyrics or melodies the model may have reproduced.
  3. Remove real people you do not have consent for. That includes celebrities, employees who have left, and customers.
  4. Label realistic synthetic content. Use the platform's AI label and, for EU audiences, disclose deepfakes clearly.
  5. Keep ads honest. No invented customers, reviews or results; disclose AI actors where the law requires it.
  6. Add and document human work. Edit, arrange and combine outputs, and keep drafts, so you can show what you created.
  7. Save your records. Keep prompts, files and licences for each published piece.

Steps 2 to 4 are where BINAI's check before you post helps: it looks for material used without permission, content that breaks a platform rule and wrong facts, and points to the second where each problem appears. It lowers the risk; it does not replace legal judgment.

This article is general information, not legal advice; for a specific case talk to a lawyer in your country.

Make AI content you can stand behind

BINAI makes clips, product videos, animated videos and images where every piece stays editable, so you can add your own creative work, and checks each one before you post. Try it at app.binai.it or compare the plans.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to use AI-generated content for my business?

Yes. No US, EU or UK law bans businesses from publishing content made with AI. What you must still respect are the usual rules: do not copy protected works, do not use real people's likeness without consent, do not mislead consumers in ads, and label realistic deepfakes where the law or the platform requires it.

Do I own the content an AI tool makes for me?

Usually by contract, yes: OpenAI, Google, Midjourney and Canva say outputs belong to the user, with conditions. But owning an output under a tool's terms is different from holding copyright in it. In the US, material generated wholly by AI without enough human creative control is not protected by copyright.

Is AI-generated content public domain?

Not exactly. In the US, purely AI-generated material is not protected by copyright, so others may be free to copy it. But the content can still contain someone else's protected work, a trademark or a real person's likeness, and those rights do not disappear because an AI produced the image or text.

Do I have to label AI-generated content?

It depends where and what. Since 2 August 2026 the EU AI Act requires anyone using AI professionally to disclose deepfakes, meaning realistic AI content showing real people, places or events. YouTube requires disclosure of realistic altered or synthetic content. Obviously artificial content, such as cartoons, generally needs no legal label.

Can I get in trouble for an AI ad that shows a fake customer?

Yes. The FTC's rule on reviews and testimonials, in force since 21 October 2024, covers testimonials that claim to come from someone who does not exist, including AI-generated fake reviews. The FTC Act also forbids deceptive ads in general, so an AI 'customer' presented as real can create liability.

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