Common Mistake #2: Believing That AI-Generated Works Have Partial Protection.

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"What do you mean it can't be registered? But I made it — AI is just another digital tool, and the creation reflects my creative intent."

Undeniably, it feels a bit unfair not to be recognized as the author of something you developed with AI and your own creative effort. I share that frustration, but there is an explanation for all of this, and I will try to lay it out as simply as possible through this article.

Up to now, every digital tool you know — Photoshop, Word, take your pick — reflects and gives expression to the author's intent and, as the case may be, to their skill and mastery with that tool.

Take the creation of an animated character in Adobe Illustrator as an example.

Every digital stroke, line, shape, color, and touch-up was selected by the author; it unequivocally reflects their intent to set their ideas down on a medium or support.

Now think about this same process with AI: the creator's main tool is crafting precise descriptions in a prompt or input that expresses what they want, and that intent may or may not be reflected in the output the AI returns — the result could be entirely random. AI will give you four options every time you press enter, and what is generated lacks creative control. AI is a probabilistic process that produces uncontrollable results beyond the adjustments and derivatives that, once again, are merely a loop of unstable iterations.

In a one-on-one comparison, the difference is clear: there is no equivalence between making stroke by stroke — where every line was drawn by you — arriving at a final result, and writing a prompt, even a refined one. The creative control is out of your hands.

This uncontrollable randomness that AI produces is the core problem: you cannot claim copyright in something you did not make.

And here we might already be divided — you may not agree with this position (which is not mine, but rather that of the USCO in the United States and of INDAUTOR and SEPI, as set forth in ruling 788/24-EPI-01-2).

So, if you created your work with AI, you already know the answer is binary: it is not eligible for copyright protection.

Now, what happens if your work was created up to a certain point through traditional means, and at some stage AI was introduced to improve or edit it? Has the work been ruined, and does it therefore lack any protection — or can there be a partial registration?

The short, direct answer: there is no such thing as a partial registration, and we already know what happens when AI enters the process — the work is tainted and loses any possibility of being protected.

The work would have protection up to the point at which it was combined with AI. This is not partial protection; it is the traditional process we have known up to now and that is contemplated by the Federal Copyright Law (LFDA), which provides that works are protected from the moment they are set down on a material support — nothing new under the sun so far.

In the well-known "Zarya of the Dawn" case, the USCO denied registration of everything produced with AI and granted registration only over the texts written entirely by the author herself.

But it would be wrong to think of this as a partial registration: the original certificate was voided and a new one was issued, removing everything that had been produced by AI.

That is precisely why you should not be confused: there are no partial registrations, there are no spectrums of AI-hybrid creation, and there is no room for interpretation. It is black or white.

Registration is merely the certificate issued by the registering authority; ownership exists from the moment the work was set down on a material support.

What happens if you apply for registration of your work without disclosing that it was made with AI? In the "Zarya of the Dawn" case, the author publicly disclosed the use of AI in the creation process after she had already received the certificate for her work, and the USCO proceeded to void that certificate and issue a new one eliminating everything made with AI. In Mexico, the process would be to petition INDAUTOR to annul the issued certificate on the grounds that it does not meet the requirements established by its governing law, and the certificate would therefore be null.