Gradiente Jurídico

Insight · Technology · Analysis · 2026

Generative AI and copyright: what the DNDA is already refusing

Colombia’s copyright office restates that only natural persons are authors. Output generated 100% by AI does not enter the National Register. That changes contracts, prompts and who signs the work.

The official line, not a one-off

The DNDA publishes a list of pronouncements on artificial intelligence. The line is consistent: results generated by AI programs are not eligible for the National Copyright Register, because the rules protect creations of human intelligence. Only natural persons are recognized as authors.

That is not a 2023 tweet. In 2024 and 2025 there are resolutions refusing registration of artistic and literary works when human authorship is not shown. Law 23 of 1982 does not contemplate a “machine author”.

Assisted work vs. automatic output

Using a model as a tool — editing, selecting, composing with human judgment — is not the same as hitting generate and publishing the raw file. The first may be a work; the second, under the DNDA’s current criterion, is not registered.

The commercial risk is double: (1) presenting as your own an output that is not protectable and that a third party can replicate; (2) training or feeding the model with others’ works without a license. There is an AI bill (043 of 2025) discussing consent to train on works, voices and images. Until it is law, it is not cited as a current duty: it is cited as a signal of where the debate is going.

What to ask in the engagement

That the vendor declare whether there is AI, to what extent and who takes the creative decisions. That assignments cover the human part. That training material for an internal model not ingest third-party catalogues. That a DNDA deposit, if made, describe the process honestly.

For software, code written by people follows the copyright regime and Decree 1360. A snippet pasted from a chatbot does not make the company the author of that fragment if there is no demonstrable human contribution.

General analysis of the Colombian framework. It is not legal advice and does not describe a named client matter.

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