From Prompt to Property: Who Owns AI-Generated IP in the UAE?

9 min 2 sec

Written by

Rasha Al Ardah

Partner

r.alardah@tamimi.com View LinkedIn Profile

Rana Hegazi

Senior Associate

r.hegazi@tamimi.com

Picture this: a branding agency in Dubai Marina is briefed by a luxury hospitality group to design a visual identity for a resort opening on the Palm. The creative director types a detailed prompt into a generative AI tool and, within ninety seconds, has two hundred logo concepts, a colour palette, taglines in three languages, and a set of social media templates. The work is polished, the client is happy, and the invoice goes out.

That scenario raises three intertwined questions: is the output capable of copyright protection, if so, who owns any rights in it, and does it infringe existing copyright-protected works?

AI has no legal standing anywhere on earth, so it can’t have any rights to it. Not the software developer who built the model, since they made no creative choices about this particular logo. Could it be the designer who typed a prompt, but is that the same as wielding a pen? And does the paying client hold rights the law would actually enforce in the UAE? Those ownership questions sit alongside a prior question of protectability and a separate question of infringement risk, including whether training data or outputs reproduce protected works.

This is a commercial reality increasingly discussed across the region. Businesses of all kinds are using generative AI to create content that would normally be protected. For example, fintech startups producing product descriptions and marketing copy, e-commerce companies creating product images at scale, and architecture firms producing building renderings for planning submissions. As this content is monetised, its growing and diverse use raises three linked questions: whether it is protectable, who can own it, and whether its creation or use infringes existing rights.

Generative AI is producing billions of dollars’ worth of commercial output annually, including monetised code, music, industrial designs, text, images, logos, and branding. The UAE has developed a modern, comprehensive IP framework broadly aligned with international standards, yet its copyright and trademark regimes assume that the creator, owner, or applicant is a human or legal person, not an artificial intelligence system. This law update examines three linked issues: whether AI-generated output can attract copyright protection under existing concepts of human authorship and originality, who, if anyone, can own the resulting rights; and whether training or outputs create infringement risk. It also considers how businesses can navigate the gap between the technology and existing IP protection.

The Importance of Ownership

Prior to establishing the analysis, we first must outline the significance of having ownership. Without a recognised author, there is no one who can license the work, enforce it against infringers or claim moral rights. Investment in AI-generated content therefore needs legal certainty about who owns the output, particularly where businesses are committing substantial resources to its development and commercialisation.

The UAE Federal Law No. 38 of 2021 on Copyrights and Neighbouring Rights (“Copyright Law”) grants protection generally for 50 years after the author’s death, and registration asks for the author’s name, nationality, identification details and date of death. Those requirements presuppose a human author, so the mechanism breaks down if the “author” is a machine. With that said, Article 28 of the Copyright Law provides that, unless agreed otherwise in writing, copyright in commissioned or qualifying employee works goes to the commissioning person or employer. Article 9 of the Copyright Law requires transfers to be in writing and provides that the author retains rights not expressly assigned. Both provisions presuppose that a human author exists in the first place. Businesses therefore need to know whether an AI-generated output is protectable and, if so, who can exploit it commercially.

Protectability, Ownership, and Infringement

The question of copyright naturally arises where AI is used to create or contribute to a creative work. Traditionally, where a person produces an original photograph, jingle, software programme or other creative work, copyright provides protection for that creation. In the UAE, this is set out principally in in the Copyright Law. The starting requirements are therefore both originality and a legally recognisable human author, an output’s commercial value or novelty alone does not establish copyright protection.

The Copyright Law also recognises the author’s moral rights, including attribution and the right to object to certain alterations. Article 7of the same law, further requires authorisation from the author, or the person deriving rights from the author, to use a protected work.

The difficulty, then, is not only identifying what can be protected, but also identifying whether an AI-generated work meets the requirements for protection and, if it does, who can claim that protection.

The Copyright Law defines an “Author” as a “person who creates a work, whose name is mentioned on a work or to whom a Work is ascribed for being its owner, unless otherwise established,” and defines “Person” as a natural or legal person. The statutory language therefore points to human or legal-person authorship. An AI system fits neither category: it is not a natural person capable of holding rights, nor a legal entity to which authorship can ordinarily be attributed. The Copyright law does not address this gap, there is no provision on “computer-generated works” and no rule attributing authorship to the person who operates the AI, formulates the prompt, commissions the output, or owns the underlying model or software, similar to the position globally. The legislation assumes a person creates the work, and AI-generated content exposes the limits of that assumption.

The position differs where AI is used as a tool within a broader human creative process. A designer who generates preliminary material with AI but then exercises independent creative judgment in selecting, editing, arranging or refining it is in a different position from one who simply accepts AI output. The greater the demonstrable human contribution and original expression, the stronger the basis for identifying a human author and asserting copyright protection.

This distinction matters in practice. Businesses already use AI to generate marketing materials, product imagery, software, music and other commercially valuable content, but commercial value does not resolve whether exclusive rights can be asserted over it. The questions for UAE businesses are therefore whether the result contains sufficient original human contribution to be protected, who can exercise any resulting rights, and what infringement risks may arise in creating or using it.

Trademarks

The position differs under trademark law. Unlike copyright, trademark protection does not depend on authorship, the relevant question is whether a sign can distinguish the goods or services of one undertaking from another.

The UAE’s Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 on Trademarks (“Trademarks Law”) adopts a broad definition of what can constitute a trademark. Article 2 refers to any object with a distinctive form and expressly encompasses names, words, signatures, letters, symbols, figures, drawings, photographs, shapes, colours, three-dimensional marks, holograms, sounds and smells.

The right to register a trademark is available to any “natural or legal person,” and registration does not depend on the applicant having personally created the mark or on how it was designed. This matters for AI: businesses have long commissioned logos, names and other brand assets from employees, agencies and designers and registered the results in their own name, and AI’s involvement does not alter that framework. Article 3 sets out the grounds for refusal, including lack of distinctiveness, misleading elements, reproduction of religious symbols or public emblems, conflicts with public order, and conflicts with earlier or famous marks.

An AI-generated logo or brand identifier is not disadvantaged simply because AI was involved in its creation. If the mark is sufficiently distinctive, falls outside the statutory exclusions, and does not conflict with earlier rights, AI involvement is not, on the face of the legislation, a bar to registration.

This is a significant distinction from copyright, where the absence of a clearly identifiable human author can raise a fundamental question as to whether protection arises at all. Trademark law instead focuses on the mark’s function in the marketplace and the rights acquired through registration and use, not the creative process behind it. A company may therefore use AI to generate a logo, visual identity or brand name and seek protection in its own name; what matters is the mark’s distinctiveness, registrability, the goods and services covered, and the applicant’s ability to maintain its rights.

Not every AI-generated brand asset will be registrable: AI-generated marks can still be descriptive, non-distinctive, misleading, or confusingly similar to existing rights. But the absence of a traditional human creator is not, by itself, the central obstacle to registration – a distinction that will matter increasingly for businesses using AI in their branding.

It is interesting to note that the Ministry of Economy and Tourism, which administer the IP registries in the UAE, has launched an AI tool to help creating brands and logos, and has been encouraging customers to use the tool; however, it clearly states the need to do prior searches to ensure the trademark is available for registration.

The Future

The UAE has consistently approached emerging technologies through policy development, regulatory experimentation and legislative reform, and AI is no different. The 2024 Charter and the UAE’s broader AI strategy provide an important policy foundation, while the existing IP framework continues to govern the rights businesses can establish today.

The harder questions will arise as AI moves from an assistive technology towards a tool generating sophisticated creative output with limited human intervention, at which point protectability, authorship, ownership and infringement will become harder to resolve through existing concepts alone.

The starting point is meaningful human involvement in the creative process: where a person exercises genuine creative judgment in selecting, editing, arranging or refining AI-generated material, there is a stronger basis for identifying a human author. Businesses should avoid treating AI output as the entirety of the creative process, should review outputs for potential similarity to protected works, and should document meaningful human input throughout development.

Trademark protection is particularly valuable here. Where AI is used to develop names, logos, slogans, packaging or other brand identifiers, businesses should seek trademark protection for the resulting marks early. What matters is not who created the design, but whether the mark is distinctive, registrable and capable of indicating source.

Contractual protection is equally important. Businesses should review the terms of the AI tools and platforms they use, particularly on ownership, licensing, permitted use of outputs, confidentiality and the provider’s rights in user content, and address IP ownership expressly in agreements with external developers, agencies or AI service providers rather than leaving it to implication.

The immediate priority for businesses is not to wait for these questions to be settled. Companies can already preserve meaningful human involvement, assess whether outputs contain sufficient original human contribution, review training and output-related infringement risks, secure trademark protection for valuable brands, address ownership expressly through contracts, and keep a clear record of the creative process, a practical foundation for protecting IP today while the UAE’s legal and regulatory framework continues to evolve.