In a decision dated 6 November 2025, the People’s Court of Huangpu District (Shanghai) addressed a key issue in AI-assisted creation: whether prompts used to generate images through artificial intelligence can, as such, be protected by copyright.
The case concerned the reuse of prompts originally drafted by a visual creation company on the Midjourney platform. The claimant argued that the structure and precision of those prompts reflected sufficient creativity to qualify as protected works.
The court firmly rejected this position, providing a clear and carefully reasoned analysis of the legal nature of prompts.
The prompts at issue followed a consistent structure, combining:
These components were assembled to guide the AI system in generating images with a particular aesthetic.
The claimant argued that this combination reflected creative choices comparable to a visual script. The court acknowledged the technical sophistication of the prompts but emphasized their functional nature: they were designed to instruct the AI, not to express an autonomous artistic form.
The court recalled that originality requires the expression of the author’s personality through a specific form.
In this case, the prompts consisted of descriptive elements arranged to obtain a result, without narrative structure or expressive autonomy.
The mere selection and combination of keywords, even if deliberate, was held insufficient to constitute an original work.
The judgment strongly reaffirms the classical distinction between ideas and expression.
Prompts, the court held, merely convey a creative intention — what the user wants the AI to generate — but not the expression of that idea. They function as instructions, not as works of authorship.
Granting copyright protection to such prompts would amount to monopolising creative concepts or stylistic directions, contrary to the fundamental principles of copyright law.
Conclusion
With this decision, the Shanghai court delivers a clear message: however sophisticated they may be, prompts remain tools for interacting with AI systems and do not, in themselves, constitute protectable works.
By drawing a firm line between creative intention and protected expression, the court provides valuable guidance for the legal treatment of AI-generated content and confirms China’s leading role in shaping a coherent legal framework for artificial intelligence and intellectual property.
