An FDI company uses AI tools to generate the entire image and copy system for a product launch campaign, then finds a competitor reusing those very images and wants to claim copyright infringement. Legal must answer a question with no clear precedent in Vietnam: are AI outputs protected works at all, who owns the copyright — the company, the employee who typed the prompts, or the AI tool provider — and what rights does the company actually hold to stop the competitor?
Direct legal basis
The current frame of the IP Law (consolidated text 67/VBHN-VPQH 2026) is built on human creation: the author is the individual who directly creates the work under Article 13, and the rights system in Articles 17 and 18 attaches to authors and owners who are humans or human-established organisations. Artificial intelligence is not a legal subject, so an output an AI generates by itself, without human creative contribution, does not meet the work concept under the current frame, and no Vietnamese instrument or precedent to date recognises copyright in purely AI output. What is protected is the human creative part in the process: layout ideas by the designer, and the selection, editing, modification and combination of AI output into a whole bearing a personal imprint — that part may be a copyright object with the human as author and the employing organisation or commissioning party as owner under the rules on works created under assignment or contract.
Applying the rules in practice
On registration, the copyright authority issues registration certificates for works whose authors are humans; an application declaring an AI as author, or registering raw AI output as-is, has no acceptance basis under the current frame. The correct practice for a company is to document the human creative process in the project file: concept sketches, revision rounds, selection decisions and final editing — these papers establish the staff creative contribution and ground any later rights claim. In the employment relation, for creative contributions made in working hours under assigned tasks, the company needs labour-contract clauses and internal rules establishing the company as owner of the economic rights in work outputs, including outputs made with AI tools. With the AI tool provider, their terms of service decide commercial rights over output at the service-contract layer — the company must read them carefully, because this is entirely different from copyright under the statute.
The commercial risks of using AI output have three faces to state plainly. First, non-exclusivity risk: a competitor using the same or similar output may sit beyond reach because the company itself lacks full copyright in the purely AI part — more workable tools are trademark law where the image ties to a registered brand, and unfair competition where the rival causes commercial-origin confusion. Second, reverse-infringement risk: AI output may inadvertently replicate existing works of others, and the company bears responsibility for content it publishes in advertising. Third, platform risk: the AI provider terms may limit commercial purposes on some service tiers. The practical conclusion is that AI output suits auxiliary, high-speed content; for core brand assets meant to last, the company should invest in documented human creation to hold rights securely.
Safe-handling checklist
- Document the human creative file for every important communication product: sketches, revision rounds, selection decisions and final edits.
- Add IP clauses to labour and service contracts: the company owns the economic rights in work outputs, including AI-assisted outputs.
- Check each AI tool terms on commercial rights over outputs before campaign use.
- For core brand assets: prefer human creation with copyright registration, and use AI output for auxiliary content.
FAQs
If AI draws pictures and writes copy, who owns the copyright?
Under the current IP Law frame, the answer is that nobody holds copyright in the part an AI generated by itself, because an author must be an individual who directly creates under Article 13 and an AI is not a legal subject. Rights arise only over the human creative part in the final product: the designer who ideated, selected, edited and finished the AI output is the author of that contribution, while economic rights usually belong to the employing company or the commissioning party as agreed. The AI provider terms only govern the company service-contract relation with them; they create no statutory copyright.
Can the company register copyright for AI-created works?
Registration is available for the part whose author is human, not for pure AI output with an AI named as author. If the final product bears clear creative contribution from staff — layout, editing, combination and finishing — the company may register copyright for that work with the individual or group of individuals as authors, and the company as owner under the mechanism for works created under assignment or contract. The registration file stands stronger with human creative-process documents attached. The company should not expect a certificate covering machine-generated content as such.
What are the risks of using AI works in advertising?
Three main risk groups. First, non-exclusivity: the company can hardly stop others using similar output because the purely AI part has no clear copyright owner, so core advertising assets should not rest entirely on AI. Second, reverse infringement: AI output may replicate copyrighted images or content of others, and the publishing company bears responsibility for that content, including advertising-law review. Third, platform terms: the AI provider may limit commercial rights over output by service tier. Reduce risk with a pre-publication similarity check, a kept human-creative file, and careful reading of tool terms before each campaign.
This article has been quality-reviewed by the FLAW AI Legal Council