Who Actually Owns Your LLM Output?
You own the output. Whether OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google will defend you when it gets challenged is a different question — and most people get the EU AI Act part completely wrong.
LLM ToS Quick Reference Card
One card that answers the three questions every team building on LLMs eventually gets asked by legal: Do we own what the model generates? If someone claims it infringes, does the provider have our back? And does fine-tuning a model make us a 'provider' under the EU AI Act? Straight from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google's own terms — with the carve-outs that quietly void the indemnity.
Drop your email and I'll send you LLM ToS Quick Reference Card.
What's on the card:
Output ownership — All three (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) assign ownership of the output to you. That part is settled. The catch is that owning it isn't the same as being protected when someone challenges it.
Will they defend you — The indemnity exists, but it's full of kill-switches: it evaporates if you modify the output, combine it with non-provider tech, ignore a rightsholder's notice, or disable the built-in filters and citations. Google's cover is paid-tier only — free and credit usage gets nothing. Beta services are excluded across the board. Liability is capped at ~12 months of fees.
The EU AI Act myth — Fine-tuning a model does NOT automatically make you a 'provider' with the full obligation set. Per the Commission's own GPAI guidance, you only cross that line if your changes significantly alter the model — an indicative threshold of more than one-third of the original training compute. In practice, almost no fine-tuning gets there. Getting this wrong is what turns a €35M / 7%-of-turnover penalty from a headline into a genuine (but usually misplaced) fear.
This is a fast reference, not legal advice — verify against the primary terms and current Official Journal text before you rely on it in production.
Still want the resource?
Drop your details and grab LLM ToS Quick Reference Card.
Drop your email and I'll send you LLM ToS Quick Reference Card.