US ownership lawsuit over viral AI character highlights legal gaps

A federal court in California is handling a legal dispute over who holds the rights to a viral online character generated with artificial intelligence, according to reporting from The Guardian. An Indonesian youth using the alias Noxa designed the character, named Tung Tung Tung Sahur, in 2025 with OpenAI technology. When a creative agency representing the teenager asked a studio to remove the figure from a Roblox title, the studio responded by suing, claiming that pure AI outputs lack legal copyright because American law mandates human authorship.

This clash demonstrates how rapidly evolving software is straining traditional intellectual property rules. As generative tools let individuals launch global internet trends overnight, businesses and fans alike face confusion over who can monetize plushies, gaming content, and branded merchandise. If judges ultimately determine that entering text prompts confers no ownership rights, major entertainment firms could freely monetize user-created digital figures without compensating the original prompters.

What remains unresolved is how judges will define the boundaries of human involvement when software does the visual heavy lifting. Furthermore, this case forces us to reconsider the nature of viral fame itself: can any individual legitimately own a digital meme when its cultural value is built through collective online remixing?