AI-generated “brainrot” memes—absurd characters and short videos that spread rapidly online, including the viral Tung Tung Tung Sahur. These creations show how generative AI has made it extremely easy to produce distinctive characters, remix existing internet culture and generate endless variations.
The copyright problem is that AI-assisted creativity doesn't fit neatly into traditional ideas of authorship. A person may come up with a character concept, write prompts, select outputs and edit the final video, while an AI model generates much of the underlying imagery. That makes it difficult to determine which parts, if any, receive copyright protection and who owns them.
The situation becomes even messier because these memes are designed to be copied and remixed. Once a character goes viral, other creators can generate new versions almost instantly. Someone might take the original character, change its appearance, put it into a new scenario or combine it with another AI-generated meme. The speed of this remix culture makes conventional ownership and enforcement particularly difficult.
The broader significance is that AI is creating a new kind of internet-native intellectual property. Viral characters can acquire enormous cultural and commercial value even when their origins involve prompts, algorithms and collaborative remixing rather than a conventional human-created artwork. The resulting debate isn't simply whether AI-generated images are copyrightable—it is increasingly about where human creativity begins and ends when AI is part of the creative process, and who gets to control a character once the internet starts remixing it.
