Designers, writers, developers and agencies across Pakistan now deliver work produced with AI tools, and clients are beginning to ask the obvious question: who owns this? The honest answer is that the law has not caught up, in Pakistan or almost anywhere else — which makes the contract, not the copyright statute, the thing that actually decides it.
What Pakistani copyright law requires
The Copyright Ordinance, 1962 protects original literary, artistic, musical and other works, and it speaks in terms of an author. The scheme assumes a human creator: authorship determines ownership, the term of protection runs from the author's life, and moral rights attach to a person.
Pakistani law contains no provision addressing works generated by a machine, and there is no settled authority on the point. So the position has to be reasoned from the general requirement of originality, which has always been understood to require the author's own intellectual effort.
The direction of travel elsewhere is consistent and worth knowing: the United States Copyright Office has refused registration for images generated purely from prompts, on the ground that human authorship is required, while accepting protection for the human-authored elements of a work — the selection, arrangement and modification a person actually contributed. The United Kingdom is unusual in providing expressly for computer-generated works. Nothing in Pakistan settles it either way.
The practical rule
Treat it as a spectrum rather than a switch:
- A pure prompt output, used as-is — weakest claim. Assume you may not be able to stop anyone else using something identical.
- AI output substantially edited, arranged, combined and directed by you — your human contribution is protectable, even if the raw generation is not. Keep the evidence of that contribution.
- AI used as a tool inside your own work — background removal, upscaling, code completion, a first draft you rewrote — essentially the same position as any other tool.
The three risks nobody warns clients about
1. You may not be able to enforce it. If a competitor copies your AI-generated logo, your ability to stop them is uncertain. For anything that must be exclusive — a brand mark above all — do not rely on copyright alone. Register a trade mark with the Intellectual Property Organisation of Pakistan. Trade mark protection depends on use and registration, not on authorship, and it is unaffected by this debate.
2. The output may infringe someone else. A model can reproduce a protected style, a recognisable character or, occasionally, near-identical training material. Delivering that to a client transfers a problem to them — and under most contracts, the indemnity means it comes straight back to you.
3. What you put in may leak. Pasting a client's confidential document, source code or personal data into a public AI tool can breach your confidentiality obligations and, where personal data is involved, engage the unauthorised-transmission provisions of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016. Check what the tool does with inputs before using it on client material.
What to put in the contract
Because the statute does not answer the question, the agreement must:
- Disclose AI use. A short, honest clause stating that AI tools may be used in producing the deliverable. Clients who object will say so up front, which is far better than discovering it after delivery.
- Assign whatever rights exist. "The Provider assigns to the Client all right, title and interest in the deliverables to the extent such rights subsist" — the closing words matter, because they are honest about the uncertainty rather than warranting something you cannot warrant.
- Do not warrant exclusivity you cannot give. Never promise that the deliverable is protectable by copyright or that no similar work exists. That is the warranty that turns a legal grey area into your liability.
- Limit the indemnity and cap liability.
- Rights pass on payment, not on delivery.
- Confidentiality both ways, with an express term on what may be entered into third-party tools.
If you commission work
Ask whether AI was used, and where. Require a trade mark search and registration for anything you will use as a brand. Insist that rights are assigned in writing — in Pakistan an assignment of copyright must be in writing signed by the assignor, and a client who paid an invoice without an assignment clause frequently does not own what they think they bought.
Habits worth adopting now
- Keep your working files. Drafts, layers, revision history and the record of what you changed are the evidence of human authorship if it is ever tested.
- Note which tool produced what, and on what licence — the terms of some tools restrict commercial use or claim rights themselves.
- Register trade marks for brand assets, always.
- Do not feed confidential material into tools that train on inputs.
This article describes the general position on AI-generated works under Pakistani copyright law and is not advice on any particular work or contract. This area is unsettled and is expected to develop through legislation and case law. Consult an advocate before relying on ownership of AI-assisted output or signing a contract that warrants it.