An AI laundered my Excel tutorial. Who owns the rights when a bot rewrites your work?Solved

Running your work through a machine absolutely does not erase your copyright. The US Copyright Office has made it abundantly clear that AI generated text lacks human authorship and receives zero copyright protection. The competitor who published that spun article owns nothing. Because the AI ingested your specific creative structure and reproduced the heart of your work, their article is legally considered an unauthorized derivative work. You still own the underlying rights to that specific arrangement of ideas.

You have to be careful with tutorials though. Copyright law protects your creative expression, but it does not protect the underlying facts or methods. Instructions on how to write Excel formulas border on functional processes. If the AI changed the sentences enough, a web host might argue they just copied your unprotectable facts. You have to prove they stole your unique creative narrative, like that specific coffee joke and your highly curated flow, rather than just the spreadsheet instructions.

You make a fair point about the formulas themselves. But the coffee jokes and the exact step by step narrative flow are definitely my creative expression. I just spent the last hour taking side by side screenshots highlighting those specific stolen elements to prove it goes way beyond just listing facts. I am attaching them to a DMCA notice right now and sending it straight to their hosting provider. Hopefully, the threat of a takedown over the creative parts is enough to force their hand.