Published 2026-08-22

Procurement asks who owns the file. The honest answer has three parts, and most suppliers answer one of them and move on. This is a list of what to ask for before signing — from any supplier, including this one.

01Kuwait Army02Gulf Bank03Midana04Warba Bank05Dabdoob06Boursa Kuwait07Palmy08World Defense Show09Hyundai10Kellyville

In brief

• Three assets leave the studio: finished master, source project, generation record. Owning the master proves you can run the ad, not that you can remake it.
• Platform terms that disclaim ownership prove the platform is not asserting a competing claim. They do not prove the output is protected, exclusive, or safe to trademark.
• The United States Copyright Office concluded in January 2025 that copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material. That is a US administrative position, not law elsewhere.
• Copyright is territorial. In Kuwait the governing statute is Law No. 75 of 2019 on Copyright and Related Rights, which repealed Law No. 22 of 2016.
• TikTok's Commercial Music Library User Terms permit posting only within TikTok; any other commercial use requires separate permission from the rights holders. Generation does not absorb that licence.

Three assets leave the studio, not one

A finished campaign is not a single deliverable. It is three, and they are usually contracted as if they were one.

• The finished master. The graded film, the retouched still, the exported cutdowns. This is what the client should own outright on final payment — worldwide, all media, perpetual, with any supplier portfolio right named and approved separately.
• The source project. Layered files, edit timelines, audio stems, upscale passes, reference sheets, colour recipes. Without these, a revision next quarter is a re-shoot.
• The generation record. Model name and version, prompts, seeds, reference images and where those references came from.

Owning the master proves you can run the ad. It does not prove you can remake it, defend it, or hand it to a different supplier. Ask for all three in writing, and ask which ones are transferred versus merely archived. The same split applies to AI video production and to still image generation.

The source project is the layered files, edit timelines, audio stems, upscale passes, reference sheets and colour recipes behind a finished master. Without them, a revision next quarter is a re-shoot.

What the generation platforms actually grant

Read the terms of the tools your supplier renders on. They are public, and they are more specific than most agency contracts.

Runway's Terms of Use, last updated 11 May 2026, state: "The Company does not claim ownership of any of your Inputs or Outputs". They also state that "the Company does not restrict your commercial use of your Outputs". The same clause adds that inputs and outputs may be used to train and improve its models.

Stability AI's Terms, effective 31 July 2025, go further and assign: "we assign to you all of our right, title, and interest (if any) in the Outputs". Note the parenthesis.

ElevenLabs' Terms, last updated 31 March 2026, say "you retain all rights in and to your Output". The same terms grant the company a perpetual, irrevocable, sub-licensable licence to the content you supply.

Google's Terms of Service, effective 30 July 2026 in the Kuwait country version, say "Your content remains yours". That is a statement about your content, not a statement about model output.

These clauses prove the platform is not asserting a competing claim. They do not prove the output is protected, exclusive, or safe to trademark.

A platform assignment is not a copyright

The two are routinely conflated in pitch decks. They are different things.

The United States Copyright Office addressed this in Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (January 2025). It concluded that "Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements". It also concluded that "Based on the functioning of current generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control." It further stated that copyright protects original human expression in a work "even if the work also includes AI-generated material", assessed case by case.

Two limits matter for a Gulf buyer. First, that is a US administrative position, not a court ruling and not law anywhere else. Second, copyright is territorial. In Kuwait the governing statute is Law No. 75 of 2019 on Copyright and Related Rights, which repealed Law No. 22 of 2016. Whether and how it treats machine-generated output is not something a marketing supplier should be asserting to you with confidence. Where a supplier sounds certain, ask which jurisdiction and which text they are certain about.

A platform assignment is a term of service that transfers to you whatever right, title and interest the platform has in an output, if any. It proves the platform is not asserting a competing claim, not that the output is protected.

Indemnity is a paid product with named exclusions

Some platforms will defend you against an infringement claim on generated output. That protection is narrower than it sounds.

Google Cloud's Service Specific Terms extend indemnification to allegations that "an unmodified Generated Output from a Generative AI Indemnified Service using only Google Pre-Trained Model(s)" infringes third-party IP. They then exclude cases where the customer "knew or should have known was likely infringing", and cases where safety filters were disabled. Critically, they also exclude cases where "the allegation is based on a trademark-related right as a result of Customer's use of such Generated Output in trade or commerce". The definition also requires that the service "is not provided to Customer free of charge".

So: unmodified output, on a named paid service, and not for trademark claims. Advertising is trade or commerce. Ask your supplier which account tier and which model surface produced each asset. Get the answer in the handover document, not in an email.

Generative AI indemnification is a platform's undertaking to defend you against a third-party infringement claim on generated output. Google Cloud's version is limited to unmodified output from a named paid service. It excludes trademark-related allegations arising from use in trade or commerce. Advertising is trade or commerce.

When a synthetic person appears in the work

A generated face or a cloned voice is a rights question before it is a craft question.

The US Copyright Office's Part 1: Digital Replicas report (July 2024) found existing law insufficient. It recommended a federal statute covering "all individuals, not just celebrities, public figures, or those whose identities have commercial value". It also recommended that individuals be able to "license their images and voices for use in digital replicas but not to fully assign all rights". It noted a patchwork of inconsistent state laws. Gulf jurisdictions have their own personality, privacy and advertising rules. Treat that report as a description of the problem, not as your legal position.

Platform terms push the obligation to you. ElevenLabs states plainly: "You may not provide Input or create Output for which you do not have all the rights necessary to grant us the license described above."

Demand a signed release for every real person whose face or voice informed an asset, with scope, territory and term. For a fully invented character, demand a written statement that no identifiable individual was used as a reference — and ask what evidence supports it. This matters most in virtual influencer and UGC-style ad work.

A signed release is written permission from every real person whose face or voice informed an asset, stating scope, territory and term.

Music and stock licences do not get cleaner because AI touched them

The music bed, the stock plate, the font, the third-party product shown on a shelf — each carries its own licence, and generation does not absorb any of them.

Platform sound libraries are the common trap. TikTok's Commercial Music Library User Terms state that "You may only post or share videos that include Commercial Sounds within TikTok". They add that "Commercial Uses outside of TikTok are not permitted and no rights are granted by TikTok for such uses". Any other use requires separate permission "directly from the Commercial Sound rights holder(s)".

A track cleared for your TikTok account is not cleared for your Meta placements, your in-store screens, your airport DOOH or your Ramadan TVC. Ask for a licence register per asset: what is licensed, for which placements, which territories, and until when. Then check the register against your actual media plan.

Provenance and disclosure travel with the file

Two things now attach to a delivered asset that did not exist a few years ago.

The first is embedded provenance. The C2PA specification exists to "enable global, opt-in, adoption of digital provenance techniques". A C2PA Manifest carries assertions covering creation details, modification history and ingredient assets. It also carries a digital source type distinguishing captured from generated material. Ask whether your masters ship with Content Credentials attached, stripped, or never written. Any of the three can be the right answer. Not knowing is not.

The second is platform disclosure. YouTube requires creators to disclose realistic altered or synthetic content. That includes content that "makes a real person appear to say or do something they didn't do" or "generates a realistic scene that didn't actually occur". The rule exempts minor aesthetic edits. Whoever uploads carries that obligation. That makes it a handover item, not a production detail. It belongs in the same file as your approval workflow.

A C2PA Manifest is embedded provenance data carrying assertions about creation details, modification history, ingredient assets, and a digital source type that distinguishes captured material from generated material.

The handover checklist

Put these in the contract or the delivery note. A supplier who can answer all of them quickly has done this before.

• Assignment of the finished masters on final payment: worldwide, all media, perpetual, irrevocable.
• Source project files listed by name and format, with the transfer or archive status of each stated.
• The generation record per asset: model, version, prompt, seed, reference images and the source of every reference.
• Named rendering account and tier for each asset, and whether any platform indemnity applied to it.
• A written statement of any licence granted back to the supplier — portfolio, case study, model training — and the right to refuse it.
• Signed releases for every real face and voice, with scope, territory and term.
• A per-asset licence register for music, stock, fonts and third-party marks.
• Content Credentials status: attached, stripped, or absent.
• Disclosure position for each distribution surface, and who uploads.
• A named point of contact for a takedown or a rights claim after the engagement ends.
• The contract in Arabic and English, both signed. النسخة العربية من العقد وثيقة قائمة بذاتها، لا ترجمة حرفية للنسخة الإنجليزية.

This list is not legal advice and no part of it is a substitute for counsel in your jurisdiction. It is a set of questions. THE UNKNOWN BRAND publishes its own limits on accountability and evidence, and this checklist is meant to be used against us as readily as against anyone else. If a supplier cannot produce the generation record for work already delivered, that tells you what the next handover will look like. See what a finished, judgeable deliverable looks like at work, and how to test a supplier's claims in choosing an AI marketing agency.

Sources

Every source below was opened and its quoted wording checked against the live page. A source we could not re-fetch was dropped, not softened. Where a rule could not be confirmed from the body that issues it, this guide says so rather than describe it from memory. Editorial responsibility sits with the studio, not an individual author. Found a moved link or a wrong citation? Email hello@theunknownbrand.com with the URL. We will correct the page and its modification date.

1. United States Copyright Office — That purely AI-generated material is not protected by US copyright, that prompts alone do not confer authorship, and that human contribution is assessed case by case.
2. United States Copyright Office — That likeness and voice replica rights are a recognised gap, that protection should cover all individuals, and that such rights should be licensable but not fully assignable.
3. Runway — That Runway does not claim ownership of outputs and does not restrict commercial use, while taking a licence to use inputs and outputs for model training.
4. Stability AI — That the platform assigns only such interest as it has in outputs, and that similar inputs may produce similar outputs for other users — so assignment is not exclusivity.
5. ElevenLabs — That the user retains rights in output, that the platform takes a perpetual irrevocable licence to supplied content, and that the user must hold all necessary rights to any voice input.
6. Google — That Google’s general Terms of Service address ownership of user content, not ownership of model output; and the version served for Kuwait and its effective date.
7. Google Cloud — That generative AI indemnification applies only to unmodified output from paid indemnified services, and expressly excludes trademark-related allegations arising from use in trade or commerce.
8. Google Cloud — That indemnification is service-specific and enumerated, covering named model surfaces rather than all AI use.
9. TikTok — That platform-library music is licensed only for use on that platform, and that any other commercial use requires separate clearance from the rights holders.
10. YouTube (Google) — That the uploader carries a disclosure obligation for realistic synthetic or altered content, with minor aesthetic edits exempt.
11. Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) — C2PA Specification, version 2.1 — That an embedded provenance manifest can record creation, modification history, ingredient assets and whether material was captured or generated.
12. WIPO Lex (World Intellectual Property Organization) — That the copyright statute in force in Kuwait is Law No. 75 of 2019, which repealed Law No. 22 of 2016.

Frequently asked questions

من يملك العمل المُنتج بالذكاء الاصطناعي: الحقوق والتسليم وما يُطلب كتابةً — هذا الدليل بالعربية.