Who owns an AI film score

Published November 2026 · Updated November 9, 2026

Doseedo scores films in your browser, and every score comes with an authorship record: what you directed, chose and changed, and what the AI made, written from the run itself. Every part is its own native stem with its MIDI, so one part, one bar or one cue can be changed without regenerating the rest, and the film comes back scored, with a printmaster, an M&E, a cue sheet and an editable Logic Pro, Ableton Live or REAPER session. Prefer your own AI agent? The same loop runs over MCP in ChatGPT or Claude. Who owns a score made with AI depends on who did what. Here is what U.S. law says as of November 2026, what our Terms say, and what the record gives you. None of it is legal advice.

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What U.S. law says, as of November 2026

• A person must be the author. The Copyright Act "requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being," and that "does not prohibit copyrighting work that was made by or with the assistance of artificial intelligence" (Thaler v. Perlmutter, D.C. Circuit, March 18, 2025). The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on March 2, 2026.
• A prompt alone is not enough. The Copyright Office found that prompts alone do not give a person enough control over what an AI makes. What it protects is a person's own expression that can be perceived in the result, and the creative selection, coordination or arrangement of AI material, or creative changes to it, decided case by case (Copyright and AI, Part 2, January 29, 2025).
• Register what a person made; say what the AI made. When you register a work, the Office asks you to disclose AI-generated material that is more than de minimis, leave it out of the claim, and describe what the human author contributed. An AI is never listed as an author (registration guidance, March 16, 2023).
• Other countries differ. This page is about the United States.

• Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 23-5233, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, March 18, 2025; review denied by the Supreme Court, March 2, 2026.
• Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2, U.S. Copyright Office, January 29, 2025.
• Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence, 88 Fed. Reg. 16190, March 16, 2023.

What our Terms say

• §6.3, ownership: "To the extent permitted by law, you own AI-generated content you create through the Service, subject to the rights of others (for example, if your inputs include copyrighted material that influences the output). You are responsible for ensuring your use of generated content complies with applicable law."
• §3.4, your uploads: "We do not use Your Content to train Doseedo's AI models." The Privacy Policy says the same of your film-scoring records: they are not added to the training corpus.
• §6.4: we design the music to be original, but "cannot guarantee that any specific generated content is non-infringing of all third-party rights."

The whole text is in the Terms of Service.

The authorship record

Every score from the scoring studio comes with one, beside the cue sheet under For the online and the paperwork: a page you can read or print, and the same record as JSON. It is written from the run's own log, not from memory:

• What you did: the sound you picked and your direction in your words, the moments you marked, every note you gave (typed or a suggestion, on the whole score or one cue) with what the composer did next, the version you kept, the cues you took out, the parts you edited by hand and the tracks you added in the studio, each with its time.
• What the AI did: the AI composer and the writers it handed cues to, the instrument model that played each part, the public-domain work any cue was cut from (composer, work, bars and licence), the spotting, the split of the film's own soundtrack, the mix and the delivery.
• Two lists for a registration: the human contribution the record shows, and the AI-generated material to disclose. They are a place to start a filing, not the filing.

For the Night of the Living Dead demo, the record lists the director's horror sound and direction, three cues each written by an AI writer from the composer's plan, every part with the instrument model that played it, and that each cue states the plan's motif. The record says it is not legal advice: it does not decide who owns what, or whether any part can be registered.

Public-domain music

Ask for real classical music in your direction, or bring a public-domain piece from Explore, and the composer cuts the cues from doseedo's public-domain catalogue. The catalogue holds only works in the public domain in the United States, in editions that are free to use or ask only for a credit (never ShareAlike), and not on a rights hold. The authorship record names each cue's composer, work, bars and licence.

A public-domain work belongs to no one, not to you and not to us. The cut and the performance were made by the AI, so the record lists them as AI material.

How more of the score becomes yours

These are the kinds of contribution the Copyright Office describes as a person's; whether yours are enough is decided case by case.

• Direct it in your own words, and mark the moments the music must hit.
• Give notes and choose. Each note is a new version; the one you keep is your choice. Revising from notes.
• Change the notes yourself. Every part arrives with its MIDI: edit it in the studio, and the record lists the parts you changed. Edits you make later in Logic Pro, Ableton Live or REAPER are yours to document.
• Write or play your own parts, and have them played with the rest (for composers).

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