Under section 5(2)(a) of the Copyright Act 1994, the author of a computer-generated work is “the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken.”

Not the model. Not, necessarily, the person who typed the prompt. The person who made the arrangements.

That phrase is where the arguments live

In a straightforward case — one person, their own subscription, their own machine — the answer is obvious. In ordinary commercial settings it is not:

• A contractor generates output using your brief but their own tools and account. Who made the arrangements?
• An employee generates output on a company subscription. Employment rules on ownership interact with authorship here.
• A platform generates output inside a product you licensed. The terms of that licence may say something about it, and those terms are the first thing to read.

The practical position is that most businesses generating AI output commercially have never asked, on their own facts, who made the arrangements — and the answer is much easier to establish in advance than during a dispute.

Two things worth doing

1. Read what your AI tool’s terms say about ownership of output. They frequently address it directly, and a contractual term will usually resolve the question before the statutory one arises.
2. Where contractors generate AI output for you, say who owns it in the contract. Silence leaves you relying on a contested statutory phrase.

Note also that authorship and first ownership are related but distinct, and commissioned work has its own rule. A reversal of that rule has been announced but is not in force, so the current rule is the one that applies.

Whether copyright exists in AI-generated work at all is a separate question — see Is AI-generated content protected by copyright in New Zealand?

Last verified: 16 August 2026. Sources: Copyright Act 1994 s5(2)(a); Bell Gully.