Who owns work made with AI under Thai copyright law?

Picture this: a company's marketing team has AI generate a campaign image. Someone types a few lines of prompt, picks the image they like, tweaks the colours and puts it on a billboard. Three months later a competitor runs something very similar, and the first thing management asks is: "Can we sue?"

The honest answer is: not clear. Thai copyright law was written before generative AI and says nothing about it. This article works through what the statute does settle, where the gaps are, and how a marketing team should work while there is no answer.

Does Thai copyright law say anything about AI?

Nothing at all. The Copyright Act B.E. 2537, as consolidated up to Amendment No. 5 of B.E. 2565, does not use the term artificial intelligence anywhere. Ownership therefore comes back to the basic definition in section 4. The English below is the Department of Intellectual Property's translation; for legal use the Thai text is the reference.

The Thai wording is "the one who makes or causes to come into being" a creative work. It does not say the author must be human, nor does it forbid tools. Two open questions follow. First, is an image generated from a short prompt a "creative work" in the legal sense? Second, if it is, does the person typing the prompt count as the one who brought it into being?

The statute answers neither, and our legal corpus contains no Thai court ruling or Department of Intellectual Property guidance on the point. Anyone telling you Thai law has "settled" this, either way, should be asked for the source.

Is a prompt protected?

Section 6 paragraph two excludes ideas from protection from the outset. The idea of "a cat in Thai costume in front of a temple" belongs to no one; anyone may have it. A long, carefully composed prompt might be a literary work in its own right like any other writing, but that protects the prompt text, not the image it produces.

Who is likely to own what, depending on how AI is used?

Where the law gives no direct answer, the workable approach is to sort work by how much a person actually did. The table below is the AIPDPA team's reading of the statute, not a court or agency ruling. The last column says how confident you can be.

The lesson from the table: the more a person does, the stronger the ownership case. In practice, keep evidence of what people did, such as each draft, edited files and the reason a version was chosen, not just the final file.

If an employee uses AI at work, does the company own the copyright?

Not automatically. Many companies assume that work done on company time always belongs to the company, but section 9 sets the opposite default: copyright stays with the employee who created the work unless otherwise agreed in writing. The employer only gets the right to communicate the work to the public for the purpose of the employment.

Apply that to AI and nothing changes. What the employee wrote or edited belongs to the employee absent a written agreement, while pure AI output may not be protected at all. The company's protection is the same as for any work: a written agreement in the employment contract or signed work rules. Details are in the employee copyright guide.

Hiring an agency or freelancer that uses AI

Commissioned work follows the opposite rule from employee work. Section 10 gives copyright to the party who commissioned it unless agreed otherwise, which sounds like good news for companies hiring agencies.

But section 10 vests copyright "in the work". If what the agency delivers is almost entirely AI-generated and was never protected in the first place, there is nothing for the client to receive, even after paying in full. That is the team's reading of the text, not yet confirmed by any court, but it is reason enough to write the contract carefully.

If the deal is that the agency keeps copyright and assigns it later, mind section 17 paragraph three. An assignment must be in writing and signed by both parties, and if no duration is stated the law deems it to last ten years.

• Require the agency to state in writing which deliverables used AI, and which tools
• Require a warranty that no third-party work was fed into AI to copy or adapt it
• Ask for working files, not just finals, as evidence of the human contribution
• State who is responsible if someone claims a deliverable infringes their copyright
• If copyright is assigned, do it in writing, signed by both sides, with a clear duration

Can using AI make us infringe someone else's copyright?

Yes, and this risk is clearer than the ownership question. Section 27 treats unauthorised reproduction, adaptation or communication to the public of a copyright work as infringement. It makes no distinction between doing it by hand and doing it with AI.

The riskiest habit in marketing is feeding in someone else's ad, photo or article and asking the AI to "make something similar". An output that copies the significant part of the original may count as an adaptation under the section 4 definition. The other risk is an AI producing something that happens to resemble an existing work without the user noticing.

How far does the section 32 exception help?

Section 32 paragraph one is the general test: an act does not infringe if it does not conflict with the owner's normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the owner's legitimate rights. Paragraph two lists specific cases, such as non-profit research or study, and criticism or news reporting with acknowledgement of the owner.

Advertising is plainly commercial, so the paragraph two list, much of it tied to non-profit use, is hard to lean on. As for the big question of whether training an AI model on other people's work falls within the exception, section 32 does not say, and Thai law has no exception aimed specifically at it.

The AIPDPA team's note on the direction of Thai AI law records that the draft principles of an AI law include a copyright exception for text and data mining (TDM) with an opt-out for rights holders, and that it drew the lowest support of the main principles in the public consultation. As of that note, no Thai AI Act had been published in the Royal Gazette, so this is not law.

What does the ETDA guideline say about intellectual property?

The Generative AI Governance Guideline for Organizations, from the AIGC under ETDA, uses an example that fits exactly: a bank's marketing team using AI to produce credit card ads, with intellectual property flagged as a risk. Its suggested control has two layers, check copyright law and check the AI provider's terms.

The guideline's annex, a sample use policy, puts the duty on users directly: take care not to infringe copyright or trademarks. That matters for advertising, because AI readily produces logos or product looks resembling another brand's.

This is guidance; the guideline itself says that not following it is no breach of law. Still, if a dispute ever arises, a company that followed it and can show its review records will find it much easier to explain the care it took.

Eight rules for marketing teams

1. Use only company-approved tools, and read the terms on rights in outputs before any commercial use.
2. Never feed in other people's work for the AI to imitate: competitor ads, web photos, articles you have not licensed.
3. Never ask for look-alikes of another brand's logo, characters or product design. The risk is trademarks as well as copyright.
4. Keep a human hand on the important parts. Write the key copy, edit the image, select and arrange yourself; those parts are what the company can clearly claim.
5. Keep evidence of the process: prompts, each draft and edited files, filed with the piece.
6. Check before publishing that the output does not reproduce the significant part of an existing work, especially for wide campaigns.
7. Put agreements in writing with staff under section 9 and agencies under section 10, stating who holds the rights and who is responsible.
8. Keep customer data, personal data and trade secrets out of public tools. That is a separate body of law; see protecting trade secrets.

AI at work raises more than copyright; see ChatGPT at work and four Thai laws, and if you are choosing an AI provider, see what to ask an AI vendor. AIPDPA includes a workplace AI tools policy and a staff quiz, so rules like these become something every employee has acknowledged, with a record to show it. Plans are on the pricing page.

Who stands behind this guide?

Written by the AIPDPA legal team · Content owner: Phuwara Krobtaku, Attorney-at-law · Thai Barrister-at-Law · technology & intellectual property counsel

Lawyer's licence no. 477/2558 · Thai Barrister-at-Law · LL.M. in Intellectual Property & IT Law (Gold Medal)