The Copyright Office split a comic book from its pictures

The writer's problem

Kristina Kashtanova registered her graphic novel Zarya of the Dawn without disclosing that Midjourney generated its images, then had to explain that use after the Copyright Office noticed her own social media posts describing it. The Office's decision letter, dated 21 February 2023, resolved a narrower question than whether AI art can ever be copyrighted: whether this specific registration, as filed, accurately described its human and machine contributions.

What the documents show

The letter states the Office concluded Kashtanova is the author of the work's text and of the selection, coordination and arrangement of the written and visual elements, both protected by copyright. But it states the individual images Midjourney generated are not the product of human authorship, reasoning that a user who supplies a text prompt does not control the specific image that emerges from Midjourney's process closely enough to be its master mind, unlike a photographer who poses a subject and sets a scene. Because the original application did not disclose or exclude the AI-generated content, the Office canceled the original certificate and issued a new one covering only the text and arrangement, explicitly excluding the Midjourney images, while keeping the same effective date. The letter distinguishes this from tools like Photoshop, where an artist makes deliberate, traceable edits to a specific image, calling that a different and more controllable process.

The editorial choice

An author combining AI-generated images with original text and layout should treat disclosure as a filing requirement, not an option, based on what this letter establishes: an application that omits AI involvement risks a later cancellation rather than a quiet pass. Framing arrangement and selection as the durable, protectable layer of such a work is an editorial reading of this letter, useful for authors making similar combinations, though it is not a rule the letter states in those exact terms.

What stays with the author

The text Kashtanova wrote and the specific choices she made in ordering and combining images and words remain hers and remain protected; only the individual images generated by the tool lost protection. Neither this letter nor the Copyright Office's own AI initiative page, which indexes it alongside the Office's other AI-authorship rulings, resolves how much prompt-level control, if any, would ever be enough to make a generated image itself protectable.

• Did the registration disclose the AI tool used, and if not, was it later corrected voluntarily or by cancellation?
• Is the protected material the arrangement of a work, or a specific generated image within it?
• Does a comparison to Thaler v. Perlmutter distinguish full machine autonomy from human-directed selection and arrangement?

Zarya of the Dawn shows a registration can be split rather than voided outright, protecting what a human demonstrably arranged while excluding what a tool alone produced.