Authorship logging tool for AI copyright registration

What to build

A provenance logging tool for AI-assisted creative work — a browser extension plus web dashboard that captures prompts, iterative edits, and creative decisions across writing, image, and music tools, then auto-generates a Copyright Office-formatted human-authorship report for freelancers, indie studios, and agencies registering commissioned or published work.

The US Copyright Office now requires applicants to demonstrate meaningful human creative input to register AI-assisted works, but creators have no systematic way to capture or format that evidence, opening a documentation-tool gap.

Demand

Freelancers, indie studios, and agencies using AI tools in paid or published work now carry registration risk if they can't substantiate their human creative contribution, and most are relying on ad-hoc chat exports or version history rather than a purpose-built audit trail.

• Hacker NewsEngagement

  56 points, 35 comments on 'Copyright Office is restoring copyright to something you have to work to get' — high engagement at the source for a regulatory/copyright policy topic.

• US Copyright OfficeRegulatory guidance

  Guidance indicates works incorporating AI-generated content may be eligible for copyright protection only if a human author exercised sufficient creative control, selection, and arrangement, and applicants must disclose and substantiate that human contribution.

• US Copyright OfficePolicy report

  Reporting on Copyright Office review of AI-assisted registrations indicates a case-by-case human-authorship analysis, placing the documentation burden on creators to prove meaningful human creative involvement.

Stack

• Chrome Extension APIs (capture prompts/edits in-browser across ChatGPT, Midjourney, etc.)
• Supabase (auth, project/edit-log storage)
• React or Vue web dashboard
• PDF generation (react-pdf or Puppeteer) for the Copyright Office-formatted report
• Stripe (subscription billing)
• Figma/Adobe plugin APIs (optional deeper integration for design workflows)

Solo + AI difficulty

The manual-logging MVP — a simple editor where a creator records prompts, revisions, and decisions as they go, exported to a formatted PDF report — is buildable in 2-4 weeks by one person with AI help. The hard, time-consuming part is passive capture: reliably auto-logging edit history inside third-party tools like Photoshop, Midjourney, or ChatGPT without manual entry, plus keeping the report template current as Copyright Office guidance evolves.

Entry threshold

A browser extension or plugin that captures revision history and prompt logs and exports a structured authorship report is buildable solo in a few weeks; the harder part is tracking the Copyright Office's shifting guidance and convincing users registration risk is real enough to pay for.

Window

6-12 months

Where to find first users

• r/freelance, r/ArtificialInteligence, r/midjourney
• Indie Hackers launch post
• Product Hunt launch
• Twitter/X AI-art and AI-writing creator communities

Counter-signals & risks

• The human-authorship standard is still evolving and subject to litigation and future rulemaking, so a documentation format built today risks not matching tomorrow's requirements.

• Freelancers and small studios may not see registration risk as urgent enough to pay for a dedicated tool, especially if informal logging like version history or chat exports feels sufficient.

• Large creative software platforms such as Adobe and Figma could build native provenance and authorship logging directly into their tools, undercutting a standalone product.