MHAIX

MHAIX · Practical authorship guide

How do I prove I wrote an AI-assisted song?

You prove it by documenting your creative decisions, not by proving the AI was involved. A record showing that a generation happened is worth very little. A record showing what you wrote, chose, rejected, rebuilt, and performed is evidence of authorship — and that is what copyright protects.

This guide covers what to keep, how to organise it, and what to do with it afterward. It is written to be useful on its own.

What evidence should I keep?

Keep everything that shows a decision being made, not just the files that show a result.

Most creators save the final export and nothing else. The final export is the least useful artifact you own, because it contains no trace of how it came to exist.

Before generating

  • Lyric drafts, including bad ones and abandoned ones
  • Voice memos of hummed or sung melody ideas
  • Chord progressions, key and tempo choices, structural sketches
  • Written notes on concept, intent, and reference points
  • Your prompts — and every revision of them

During generation

  • Which generation you selected, and in your own words why
  • Which generations you rejected, and why
  • Parameter and setting changes between attempts
  • Dated intermediate exports, not only the final one

After generating

  • DAW session files showing how stems were chopped, rearranged, replaced, or re-timed
  • Vocals you recorded yourself
  • Instruments you played
  • Arrangement changes: sections moved, removed, rewritten, added
  • Mix, EQ, layering, and production decisions
  • Stems and MIDI

Throughout

  • Dated versions at every meaningful stage. Timestamps turn a pile of files into a sequence, and a sequence is what demonstrates process.

Concept and prompt development can be captured as you work in Stem:Ample; lyric drafts and revision history in Re:Writ. Both produce the record as a by-product of the work rather than as a separate chore.

How do I separate my contribution from the AI's?

Go line by line through the finished work and state, specifically, who made each decision.

This is the step that decides the strength of a claim, and it is the step almost everyone skips. Vague descriptions of a process are close to worthless. Specific ones are difficult to dispute.

Weak: "I generated this song in Suno and then edited it."

Strong: "I wrote the chorus lyric and the central concept. I revised verse two three times — the final version is mine, not the generated one. I selected generation fourteen for its groove but replaced its bridge entirely. I re-cut the vocal phrasing in the second verse, moved the final chorus forward by eight bars, added the harmony stack, and built the outro from a rejected take."

The second version is not longer for the sake of it. Every clause names a decision, identifies who made it, and can be corroborated by a file.

Write this out while you still remember it. Six months later you will not.

What if my song is already released and I kept nothing?

A record built after the fact is weaker than one built during creation, but it is considerably better than nothing.

Work backwards through whatever survives — old project files, export dates, message threads where you discussed the song, streaming or upload timestamps, voice memos, earlier mixes. Then write the authorship account from memory while flagging clearly which parts you can corroborate with a file and which rest on recollection alone.

Do not backdate anything or present reconstruction as contemporaneous. An honest account with acknowledged gaps holds up. A tidy one that falls apart under questioning does not.

Where does MHAIX fit in?

MHAIX (the Meaningful Human Authorship Index) takes the evidence described above and turns it into a scored, structured, verifiable record.

Everything in this guide is work you can do yourself, in a folder, for free. MHAIX exists because doing it consistently — and in a form someone else will accept — is harder than it sounds.

MHAIX assesses a work across nine weighted dimensions of human contribution and produces a 0–100 index and a tier from H-5 (predominantly human) through A-1 (AI-generated). Completed certifications can be entered into the Veridem Authorship Registry with a unique registry ID, QR verification, and a cryptographically signed certificate that a label, publisher, or collaborator can check independently.

Two things it deliberately does not do. It does not detect whether AI was used — that question is already answered, by you, in the disclosure. And it does not issue a pass or fail. It produces a graded assessment, because the real answer in almost every AI-assisted work is neither "human" nor "machine" but a specific and measurable mixture.

Start a MHAIX certification →

What do I do with it once it's documented?

Documentation supports registration; it does not replace it.

  • Copyright registration — file with the U.S. Copyright Office, identifying the human authorship claimed and disclosing or excluding AI-generated material. Composition and sound recording are separate filings.
  • Performing rights — affiliate the composition with your PRO (ASCAP, BMI, or your local equivalent).
  • Mechanical royalties — register the composition with the MLC.
  • Digital performance royalties — register the sound recording with SoundExchange.

Your authorship record is what makes each of these defensible if questioned later. None of them will ask for it upfront. All of them become difficult without it.

What else should I know about proving authorship?

The practical answer is to document specific human decisions honestly, even when the record is incomplete.

Can you copyright a song made with AI?
AI assistance does not automatically prevent copyright protection. Human-authored material within an AI-assisted work can be protected, including sufficiently creative human modifications, selections, coordination, and arrangement. Prompting alone is generally not sufficient. When registering, you identify the human authorship claimed and disclose or exclude AI-generated material rather than naming an AI system as an author.
Does a certificate give me copyright?
No. Copyright arises from human creative expression itself, and registration is granted by the relevant government authority. A certification documents and scores the human contribution; it does not create authorship or guarantee any registration outcome.
What does MHAIX stand for?
MHAIX is the Meaningful Human Authorship Index — nine weighted dimensions of human creative contribution producing a 0–100 index and a five-tier verdict from H-5 through A-1.
Do I need to record real vocals or play real instruments?
No, but both strengthen a claim substantially, because they are unambiguously human performance. Authorship can also rest on writing, arrangement, selection, structure, and production decisions alone.
How much human input is enough?
There is no published threshold, which is precisely why graded documentation matters. Rather than asserting that a work clears an undefined bar, a scored record describes the specific contribution and lets the reviewing party weigh it.
Is it too late if I already released the song?
No. A reconstructed record is weaker than a contemporaneous one, but far better than none. Gather what survives, write the account honestly, and mark clearly which parts are corroborated by files.