The Undergraduate Law Review at UC San Diego

The copyrightability of mixed musical works, which contain a blend of human and generative AI elements, is an issue of increasing prevalence in copyright law. While there has been some discussion on the copyright status of fully generative AI works, this mainly resides in state law, and much of the federal policy found in Copyright Guides published by the United States Copyright Office is a non-binding opinion. Additionally, the same circuit courts contradict themselves, as seen with the differing views on the fair use of generative AI works in the Ninth Circuit Cases of Bartz v. Anthropic PBC (2024) and Kadrey v. Meta (2023). These issues combine to create a copyright “Dead Man’s Land” where the U.S. Copyright Office is forced to inspect mixed musical works on a case-by-case basis: an inefficient and ineffective mess for the modern day. This paper proposes that Congress pass legislation further itemizing the components of mixed musical works and only allowing generative AI to be used in one such component, alongside integrating state legislation. This policy would allow the U.S. Copyright Office to evaluate all mixed musical works under a unified framework. With the increase of artists creating mixed musical works, this solution only becomes more necessary as time progresses.