A federal magistrate judge in Michigan ruled that a pro se plaintiff’s AI-generated litigation materials are protected by the work product doctrine, and that using ChatGPT does not waive that protection. The decision creates a direct split with the Southern District of New York’s ruling in United States v. Heppner on the same issue, issued on the very same day.

On February 10, 2026, Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York ruled that documents a criminal defendant generated using Anthropic's Claude AI are neither protected by the attorney-client privilege nor the work product doctrine.

In an important (but perhaps not surprising) decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the U.S. Copyright Office’s denial of copyright registration for a work generated solely by AI. The court asked the question: “Can a non-human machine be an author under the Copyright Act of 1976?” Finding that registration would not satisfy the requirement that all registered works must be created by a human being in the first instance, the court found that the Copyright Office’s denial of copyright registration was proper.