AI generated text and images in Turkey are no longer experimental curiosities; they are used every day in marketing, law, design and business, but the legal rules about who owns the rights have not been rewritten specifically for them.
This tension produces one deceptively simple but crucial question:
When your business uses AI to create text or images, who owns the rights under Turkish law?
Below is a structured, practitioner-oriented overview in which AI is treated as it currently is under Turkish law: a powerful tool, not a legal author.
1. The starting point: FSEK still revolves around the human author
FSEK defines a “work” (eser) as an intellectual and artistic product that bears the personal characteristics of its author and fits into one of four categories:
- science and literature (Article 2) – including written texts, articles, legal analyses, blog posts;
- music (Article 3);
- fine arts (Article 4) – including photographs, drawings, graphic designs, illustrations;
- cinema works (Article 5) – including videos, films and similar productions.
The author (eser sahibi) is described as “the person who creates the work”. Under current doctrine and practice, “person” means a real human being. Artificial intelligence systems are not recognised as authors and cannot own copyright in their own name.
As a result, every AI-related question in Turkey ultimately reduces to two tests:
- Does the final output reflect human intellectual creation?
- If so, which human (or humans) can be treated as the author?
2. Scenario one: AI as a sophisticated tool – human remains the author
In many real-world workflows, AI behaves like a very advanced pen, camera or design suite:
- A lawyer writes detailed prompts, rejects weak drafts, rewrites, restructures and inserts case-law.
- A designer generates dozens of image variants, then selects, recomposes and retouches them heavily.
- A marketing team uses AI to propose slogans and outlines, but a human crafts the final article or campaign visual.
Here, AI is fundamentally instrumental. The creative decisions – structure, tone, emphasis, selection, editing – belong to the human.
In such cases, Turkish practice is comfortable treating the final product as:
- a literary work under Article 2 (for text), or
- a work of fine art under Article 4 (for images),
with the human user as the author. AI is just one more tool used in the creative process, like a camera lens or a text editor.
Where the human author is an employee, FSEK Article 18/2 becomes relevant:
- authorship (and moral rights) remain with the employee,
- but economic rights are exercised by the employer, unless the parties have agreed otherwise.
For companies this means: if your staff use AI as part of their job but still contribute significant creativity, the classic rule continues to apply – the business controls the economic exploitation of the work.
3. Scenario two: predominantly or fully AI-generated content
At the opposite extreme are situations where:
- the user gives a short, generic prompt (“write a 1,000-word article on X”, “generate a tech logo”),
- accepts the first or second output with minimal, purely technical edits, and
- the system makes most of the creative choices.
In these cases, many Turkish commentators consider that the resulting text or image does not bear the personal imprint of a human author in the sense required by Article 1/B. The system has effectively determined the expression.
If there is no genuine human intellectual creation in the final expression:
- the output may not qualify as a “work” under FSEK at all,
- there is no “author” in the strict legal sense,
- and therefore no classic copyright protection arises.
In practice this creates an uncomfortable, but important, consequence:
Pure or near-pure AI output often sits close to the public domain. Others may be free, from a copyright perspective, to reuse it, because the law does not recognise any human authorship to protect.
This is one reason why many serious projects (brands, long-term campaigns, book covers, flagship logos) now insist on substantial human refinement of AI drafts: they want to secure a work that is clearly linked to a identifiable human creator.
4. Scenario three: hybrid works – AI and humans in collaboration
Most professional use cases sit between these two poles. Typical patterns include:
- AI produces several pages of text; a human restructures the argument, rewrites large sections, adds examples, authorities and footnotes.
- AI generates a set of images; a human selects a few, combines them, alters composition, colours, typography and prepares final artwork.
- A creative team uses AI for mood boards and variations, then designs the final logo manually.
In such hybrid settings:
- AI is not a co-author; it cannot share authorship under current law.
- Only the human contributions that reach the originality threshold are protected.
- Where several humans contribute creative elements, they may be joint authors of the final work.
From a risk-management perspective, the more clearly you can identify what the human actually did – choices, re-writing, layout, visual composition – the stronger your position will be if the work later needs to be enforced or defended.
5. Contractual layers: user, provider, employees and freelancers
5.1. User and AI provider
Most AI platforms deal with ownership in their terms of use. Common formulations include:
- “You own the output you create with the service.”
- “We assign to you all our rights in the output, subject to these terms.”
- or, conversely, “We retain certain rights to reuse output for training, improvement or safety.”
Under Turkish law, such clauses are binding between the parties (user and provider), even if the underlying output is not a “work” in the FSEK sense. Contractual rights can therefore be very important commercially, particularly:
- to clarify who may exploit the output vis-à-vis the provider,
- to regulate sensitive sectors, territories and use cases,
- and to manage liability if third parties allege infringement (e.g. training-data or similarity issues).
But contract language cannot transform a non-work into a FSEK-protected work against the rest of the world. Copyright protection still depends on human intellectual creation.
5.2. Employees using AI
When employees in Turkey – lawyers, designers, marketers, engineers – create AI-assisted content in the course of their duties:
- they remain the authors of any human-creative elements,
- and the employer is generally entitled to exercise the economic rights, in line with Article 18/2 and any contractual provisions.
For businesses, the practical task is to ensure that:
- internal policies permit or limit AI use appropriately,
- confidentiality and data-protection obligations are respected when prompts contain client or personal data,
- and employment contracts address both AI use and rights allocation clearly.
5.3. Freelancers, agencies and service providers
For non-employees, there is no automatic “work-made-for-hire” rule. Absent a written contract:
- the freelancer or agency will usually retain economic rights in any human-authored work,
- AI use does not alter this; it only complicates the originality and authorship analysis.
Service agreements should now cover at least:
- whether and how AI tools may be used in delivering the work,
- who will own economic rights in the final, AI-assisted text or images,
- warranties that the work does not knowingly infringe third-party rights,
- and responsibility for any claims related to training-data or similarity.
6. Text versus images: specific notes for Turkish practice
6.1. AI-generated text
For AI-assisted text (articles, blog posts, newsletters, research notes, marketing copy):
- if the final version is carefully rewritten, curated and structured by a human, it will typically be treated as a literary work under Article 2, with full protection;
- if the user simply accepts and publishes AI output with minimal cosmetic edits, it may be difficult to argue that the text bears any human individuality.
For law firms and other professional service providers, there is a second layer of concern besides copyright: ensuring that the use of AI tools is compatible with professional secrecy, client confidentiality, KVKK obligations and conflict-of-interest rules.
6.2. AI-generated images and branding
For images, including those used in branding, packaging and advertising:
- If a human designer meaningfully shapes the layout, colours, typography and overall visual language, the result is generally a fine arts work under Article 4.
- If the visual is effectively a “raw” AI output, repeated from generic prompts, originality and enforceability may be questioned.
Additionally:
- logos and key visuals may need to function as trademarks under the Industrial Property Code; distinctiveness and similarity to earlier marks become critical;
- unfair competition rules may apply where AI-generated images imitate the “look and feel” of well-known brands or artistic styles too closely.
For high-value brand assets, relying solely on unedited AI images is, for now, a risky strategy.
7. Practical checklist for businesses in Turkey using AI generated text and images
To turn this into an actionable policy rather than abstract theory, consider the following internal checklist:
- Define how you use AI
- Is AI suggesting options, or effectively writing/designing for you?
- Aim for human-led, AI-assisted workflows, not the reverse.
- Preserve evidence of human creativity
- Keep drafts, prompt histories, intermediate files and edited versions.
- These become valuable if later you need to prove originality or authorship.
- Review AI provider terms before deploying at scale
- Who may use the output, and under what limits?
- May the provider reuse your prompts or outputs?
- Any restrictions by sector, client type or jurisdiction?
- Update employment and freelance contracts
- Explicitly allow or restrict AI use for client work.
- Allocate economic rights in AI-assisted works to the company where appropriate.
- Add warranties and indemnities around third-party rights.
- Be conservative for flagship assets
- For logos, long-term campaign visuals, major publications, ensure that human designers and authors remain at the centre.
- Use AI for ideation, mood-boards and drafts; lock in final decisions through human work.
- Monitor legal and policy developments
- Turkish legal scholarship and regulators are actively debating whether AI-specific reforms are needed. Until then, FSEK’s classic structure remains the frame – but changes are very possible in the medium term.
8. Conclusion
Under current law, AI generated text and images in Turkey are not governed by a special autonomous regime. They are absorbed into the existing architecture of FSEK:
- Only human beings can be authors.
- AI systems cannot themselves own economic or moral rights.
- Protection depends on the presence – or absence – of human intellectual creation in the final output.
For practitioners and businesses, the practical translation is clear:
- Treat AI as a powerful assistant, not a substitute for human creativity.
- Design contracts, internal policies and workflows so that every important text or image can be traced back to identifiable human decisions.
- And remember that, in Turkish law, what gives a work its legal life is not the machine that helped generate it, but the human mind that ultimately shaped it.
Yanıt yok