Philippines Draft Rules on AI and Copyright Registration: Four Categories, No Single Test

By Dafa Attas

Photo: Pexels / Pixabay

The window for comments on a closely watched Philippine policy paper shut on 30 October 2026. The Philippine IP office, IPOPHL, had released draft guidelines in mid September on when AI systems, and works made with AI, can be registered, and asked creators, developers and lawyers to send views to its copyright bureau by email before the end of October.

The paper does not change the law. The Philippine IP Code, Republic Act No. 8293, still decides what counts as a protected work. What the draft does is tell the public how the office's registrars plan to treat deposit and registration requests that involve machine learning tools, either as the thing being registered or as part of how a work was made.

Two separate questions

The guidelines split the topic in two.

AI systems as software. A developer can deposit an AI program as a computer program. The draft is careful about what that achieves. Registration reaches only the protectable expression in the code. It gives no rights over the training data, says nothing about who owns what the model later produces, and does not settle whether training on someone else's material is fair use. Those issues are left to other rules and, in the end, to the courts.

Works made with AI. For songs, images, texts and other material that an AI tool helped to produce, IPOPHL sorts applications into four groups: works that are AI assisted, works that are AI enhanced, hybrid works and works that are AI generated. The labels are meant to describe how much of the creative work a person did, running from light use of a tool at one end to output produced with little or no human input at the other.

Factors, not a formula

The office has chosen not to adopt a fixed threshold. Registrars would instead look at several points together: what the human contributed and how much of it, what role the AI system played, how the person chose, arranged or changed AI elements, and what supporting material the applicant files. A disclosure of AI use therefore becomes part of the record the office reviews.

The examples in the draft help. A photographer who uses an AI tool to clean up or restore a picture they shot keeps protection for the original image and for their own edits. A songwriter who writes lyrics but lets a model produce the melody could register the song on the strength of the lyrics, but registration would not cover the machine made tune.

Director General Teodoro C. Pascua stressed that the paper does not regulate AI in general and does not give a final answer on whether AI related works are protected; it only clarifies how they will be treated when someone applies to register them with IPOPHL. Emerson G. Cuyo, who heads the Bureau of Copyright and Related Rights, described it as a practical starting point that the office expects to refine as experience builds up.

Why it matters

Most Asian offices have so far handled AI authorship through speeches, isolated refusals or court rulings. A written, category based approach is closer to the guidance the US Copyright Office has been issuing since 2023, though the Philippine version adds the separate track for AI systems themselves. The weak point is predictability: a multi factor test gives the office room to be fair in hard cases but makes it difficult for an applicant to know in advance where the line falls, especially for hybrid works.

The final text, and whether IPOPHL tightens the factors after the comments, is the next thing to watch. The office has said it aims to issue the guidelines by the end of 2026; no final version had been published when comments closed. Registration in the Philippines is voluntary, so the guidelines will matter most as evidence in later disputes.

The Indonesian angle

Indonesia's Copyright Law (Law No. 28 of 2014) also protects only works by human creators and, like the Philippines, records works through a voluntary system, here run by DJKI. DJKI has no published guidance yet on how to record works that involve AI or on what an AI program deposit covers. The IPOPHL draft offers a ready template, including the useful step of separating the software question from the output question. Indonesian creators who record works with DJKI would be wise to keep notes now on how they used AI tools, since that is exactly the kind of evidence a factor based test asks for.

Sources

• IPOPHL: New draft guidelines put human creativity at the center of copyright registration for AI-related works (17 Sept 2026)
• AI.info: Philippines Seeks Comments on Draft AI Copyright Guidelines by Oct. 30
• MLex: Philippines' IP office clarifies copyright rules for AI-assisted works (16 Oct 2026)
• Daily Guardian: IPOPHL AI copyright draft puts human creativity first