Do You Own The Rights To Your Marketing Materials?
In the 1996 Michael Keaton comedy, Multiplicity, his character, a man being pulled by the demands of modern life clones himself so he can be in more than one place at a time.
Then his clones start making decisions of their own, eventually creating another clone without his permission that resembles the original but is missing pieces of the original’s personality and intellect.
Generative AI has created a much less amusing version of the same problem for companies using it to build websites, pitch decks, and marketing materials.
You may have initiated the creation. That doesn’t mean you control, or even fully own, everything that comes out the other side.
Ironically, I’m seeing first of a kind companies that spend rigorously to create IP around their inventions outsource the presentation of that IP to AI tools that by default look for similarities that can make them look like everyone else instead of the original thing.
It’s understandable why cash-strapped Seed and Series A level companies try to find savings wherever they can so their lean budgets are focused on engineers and equipment, but founders who task Claude or Gemini with creating their websites and pitch decks are creating a much bigger problem for themselves—they might not own what AI makes.
Wix, GoDaddy, and Squarespace are just a few of the more popular website platforms that can create an entire website from a few prompts. But if you look at the terms and conditions, all of those platforms will state plainly that it can’t claim ownership of the output its AI tools generate for you.
What Does The Copyright Office Say?
Copyright protection in the United States requires a human author, and the U.S. Copyright Office has been consistent that work produced by a machine with no meaningful human creative input cannot be registered.
What does this mean practically? That if your business builds a marketing campaign, logo, or software product using AI tools, you may not own it. Even worse, others could use the same outputs.
For decades, our client contracts made ownership straightforward: we created the work, the client paid us, and our agreement transferred the appropriate rights to them.
Generative AI complicated that equation enough that last year we hired one of the most prominent legal minds in the business to rewrite our contracts to spell out who owns what.
How Can I Own My Website?
I don’t give out legal advice because I’m not an attorney, but the legal minds we consult say the more human generated content that goes into creating a website, a video, or any marketing collateral, the better your claim of ownership.
Did you write all of the copy and upload all of the images into an AI platform that creates websites? Then you have a good claim for ownership. But if all you did was feed a prompt into a window telling it the name of your business, what you do, where you’re located, the names of your employees, the uses for your technology, and hit the Output button, you’ve probably left yourself exposed.
What You Should Ask Your Marketing Agency
Before you sign a contract with an agency, ask if they have an AI policy, and communicate all of your specifications regarding limitations or restrictions for the use of AI.
The flip side of the coin is that it’s your responsibility as the client to inform the agency in writing which portions or elements of the materials you’re providing have been generated by AI, especially if there is any proprietary information that you don’t want to be input into an AI agent.
Don’t Outsource Your Most Valuable Commodity
Nobody is an expert at everything, which is why AI tools are so popular. Need to update your resume, make a clever meme, or do deep research on a topic? Great!
But if your company spent the last five years proving your concept and then hired the best legal minds to protect what makes your technology different, don’t undermine that hard work by opting for a facsimile that diminishes the real thing.
