Source: La Legge per tutti

A musical work created with the aid of artificial intelligence can be protected under Italian copyright law only if it constitutes “the result of the intellectual work of the author”; the law n.132 of 23 September 2025 amended art. 1 of law n. 633/1941 to state expressly that works created with AI tools may be protected provided they are the outcome of human intellectual effort. The statute affirms two core principles: copyright remains anchored to human ingenuity (AI cannot be an author), and AI is treated as an instrument whose use does not automatically exclude protection when the final result is attributable to a natural person.

Legal originality does not require absolute novelty but an “act of creativity, even minimal, susceptible of manifestation in the external world”; the Court of Justice of the European Union’s formulation that a work is original when it “reflects the personality of its author” is cited, and case law (Cass. civ., sez. 1, n. 11413/2024) excludes protection where production is driven solely by technical constraints or rules. The evaluation is concrete and fact‑specific: human acts that typically suffice include selection, combination and modification of AI proposals based on aesthetic judgment, detailed prompt engineering guiding the system toward a personal result, and substantial post‑production/arrangement that makes the output recognizably personal. Conversely, a merely generic input and passive acceptance of the first AI output will likely fail to show the necessary personal creative choices, leaving the piece outside copyright protection and effectively freely usable by others. If protected, the human author acquires inalienable moral rights and exploitable patrimonial rights under law n. 633/1941; if not protected, commercial exploitation remains possible but without exclusive rights or entitlement to royalties. The boundary is not always clear and must be assessed case by case by examining the creative process as a whole, not only the final result.