A skincare brand types a prompt, and forty seconds later it has a clip of a woman in a bathroom saying the serum cleared her skin in a week. Nobody was paid, nobody was briefed, and the clip is ready for the ad account by lunch. In the United States two agencies have something to say about that clip before it runs, and neither of them is talking about quality. The Copyright Office says that when an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship and is not protected by copyright. The Federal Trade Commission's rule on fake reviews and testimonials names, as its first prohibition, testimonials by someone who does not exist, with AI-generated fake reviews as its own example. The woman in the bathroom does not exist, and nobody owns her.
What generated video is good at, and where it fails in front of a camera-literate audience, is the general comparison; this guide is about the American layer under the decision: who owns a generated video, what a generated testimonial is under the FTC's texts, and how a brand uses the tool without either problem.
Who owns a generated video
Prompts are instructions, not authorship
The Copyright Office's registration guidance on works containing AI-generated material, published in 2023, applies the human authorship requirement to the case. If a work's traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it. When an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces a complex visual work in response, the guidance says, the traditional elements of authorship are determined and executed by the technology, not the human user; prompts, in the Office's words, function more like instructions to a commissioned artist, identifying what the prompter wishes to have depicted while the machine determines how those instructions are implemented. The Office's 2025 report on copyrightability confirms the point among its conclusions: copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements, and, based on current generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control.
What that means for a brand
A brand that runs creator video holds a license from an author, and the ownership guide describes what that license is, a permission for listed uses, with ownership on a signed document. A brand that runs a purely generated clip holds no copyright in it, because the guidance says there is none to hold: the material is not protected, and in a registration application it must be disclaimed. There is nothing to license exclusively, nothing to assign, and nothing to enforce against a competitor who generates the same scene. That is not a flaw in the contract; it is the Office's reading of the statute, and the 2025 report says the question can be resolved under existing law without legislative change.
What stays protected
The same texts keep the door open for human work. The 2023 guidance says a human may select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way that the resulting work as a whole is an original work of authorship, or may modify the material to a degree that meets the standard, and the 2025 report states that the use of AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the availability of copyright protection for the output, that copyright protects the original expression a human author contributes even when the work also includes AI-generated material, and that the analysis is case by case. A creator who writes the script, films the product and uses a tool to clean the audio or extend a background has made a work; a prompt that produces the whole video has not.
What a generated testimonial is
The rule's first heading
The FTC's rule on fake reviews and testimonials, announced in August 2024, names in its first prohibition reviews and testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist, its example being AI-generated fake reviews, and it prohibits a business from creating, selling, buying or disseminating such testimonials when it knew or should have known they were fake. The generated woman saying the serum cleared her skin is a testimonial by someone who does not exist, and the brand that generated her knew.
The Guides' line between a dramatization and a customer
The Endorsement Guides reach the same clip from another side. At 16 CFR 255.2, advertisements presenting endorsements by what are represented, expressly or by implication, to be actual consumers should use actual consumers in both the audio and video, or clearly and conspicuously disclose that the persons in the advertisement are not actual consumers. And at 255.0, the Guides give the example of two unidentified shoppers in a supermarket praising a detergent and note that this obviously fictional dramatization would not be an endorsement. The line runs between those two texts: a generated scene the audience reads as a dramatization is advertising, whereas a generated person presented as a customer with an experience is a testimonial the rule's first heading names. The reviews and testimonials guide describes the rule's other headings.
| What the brand is comparing | Generated video | Creator video |
|---|---|---|
| Copyright in the video | None in purely generated material, per the Copyright Office; possible in a human's selection, arrangement or modification, case by case | The creator's, licensed or assigned to the brand by a signed document |
| The person on screen | Does not exist; presented as a customer, a testimonial by someone who does not exist under the FTC's rule | A real person whose experience the claim has to reflect |
| Disclosure question | Under 255.2(c), actual consumers or a clear disclosure that the persons are not actual consumers | The material connection, disclosed where the audience does not expect it |
| Substantiation of the claim | The brand's, as for any ad | The brand's, as for any ad, plus the creator's honest experience under 255.1 |
| What competitors can do | Generate the same scene; there is no copyright to stop them | Nothing with the brand's video without a license from the author |
| Cost that does not appear on the invoice | The checks above, every clip | The license, the W-9, the 1099-NEC from $2,000 |
What generated video is for
The tool is not the problem; the person it invents is. Product renders, packshots and a storyboard for a creator to film against are generated material the brand can use without inventing anyone, and without a copyright in them, as the table says. A background extended behind a real creator or a voice cleaned up is assistive use, and the Office's report says that using AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the protection of the work a human makes. What a brand cannot get from a prompt is a customer, because a customer is a person with an experience, and the FTC's texts are written around that person. The honest arrangement, which the creator program guide in this cocoon describes from the monitoring side, is a real creator on screen saying something true about a real use, with tools behind the camera and not in front of it.
When each one wins
What usually stops a brand from seeing the line is that the generated clip looks like the creator's clip, and the ad platform accepts both. The texts do not look at the pixels. Generated video wins for what is not an endorsement: a product in motion, a mockup, a scene nobody reads as a person's account. Creator video wins the moment a person speaks about the product, because that is where copyright begins, with a human author, and where the fake-testimonial rule begins, with a person who exists. A brand that wants the speed of the tool and the standing of a person briefs the creator with generated storyboards and runs the creator.
The brief for a brand using both
- Never present a generated person as a customer, a user or a reviewer; the rule's first heading names that testimonial.
- Where a generated scene shows people, keep it an obvious dramatization, or disclose clearly and conspicuously that the persons are not actual consumers, as 255.2(c) describes.
- Do not budget a generated clip as an owned asset; the Copyright Office's texts say there is no copyright in purely generated material, and a registration would have to disclaim it.
- Put human work where the brand needs a copyright: the script, the shoot, the edit, with the tool as an assistant, and keep the record of who did what.
- For creator video, keep the license and the forms the hiring guide describes; for generated video, keep the prompt log and the checks, because they are what the brand has.
Sources
- U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence (2023)
- U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (January 2025)
- Federal Trade Commission, Federal Trade Commission Announces Final Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials (August 14, 2024)
- eCFR, 16 CFR 255.0, Purpose and definitions
- eCFR, 16 CFR 255.2, Consumer endorsements
Checked on 21 September 2026. This guide is not legal advice. Where this guide and the official source disagree, the official source prevails.
