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📝 Page Status: Draft — sourced but not yet reviewed

  • Status: draft
  • Sources: 6
  • Relationships: 4
  • Research debt items: 4

Brain Rot and AI-Generated Meme Characters¶

Summary¶

“Brain rot” entered mainstream English as Oxford University Press’s 2024 Word of the Year, describing concern about overconsumption of trivial online content. In 2025 the same slang attached to a wave of AI-generated absurdist meme characters (often called “Italian brainrot”) and to the Roblox game Steal a Brainrot. Whether those characters can be owned under U.S. copyright is the subject of pending Northern District of California litigation.

Verified Facts¶

  • Oxford University Press selected “brain rot” as its Word of the Year for 2024 after a public vote involving more than 37,000 participants.1
  • OUP defined “brain rot” as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging,” and also as “something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.”1
  • OUP reported that usage frequency of the term increased 230% between 2023 and 2024, and that the first recorded use it identified was in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854).1
  • OUP associated the 2024 sense with low-quality social-media content and with online “brain rot language,” citing examples such as the Skibidi Toilet video series; the announcement does not address copyright ownership of later “Italian brainrot” characters.1
  • In Spyder Games LLC v. Mementum Lab, the complaint alleges that plaintiffs own the Roblox game Steal a Brainrot, that “brainrots” in the game are inspired by humorous internet meme figures created using artificial intelligence programs, and that defendant Mementum Lab claims copyright in those characters, including “Tung Tung Sahor” / “Tung Tung Tung Sahur.”2
  • The Spyder complaint seeks a declaration that the disputed brainrots are not subject to copyright protection because they were generated by AI tools and lack the human authorship required by the Copyright Act.2
  • The Spyder complaint cites Thaler v. Perlmutter for the proposition that the Copyright Act requires work to be authored in the first instance by a human being, and quotes the Copyright Office’s March 2023 registration guidance that material whose expressive elements are determined by AI is not protected by copyright.234
  • The Copyright Office’s January 2025 copyrightability report concluded that copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements, and that prompts alone do not provide sufficient control based on current generally available technology.5
  • Spyder Games LLC v. Mementum Lab was filed November 26, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California as No. 5:25-cv-10248, assigned to Judge Noel Wise, with nature of suit listed as copyright.6

Historical Context¶

OUP presented the 2024 word as part of a longer cultural conversation about virtual life, following 2023’s “rizz.”1 By 2025, “brainrot” was also used as a label for a set of AI-generated animal-hybrid meme characters that spread on short-video platforms and were then licensed, copied, and merchandised. Steal a Brainrot, according to the Spyder complaint, debuted on Roblox in May 2025 as a treasure-hunt game in which players capture marching “brainrots.”2

The copyright dispute is not a medical claim about cognitive harm from scrolling. It asks whether an AI-generated viral character can be locked behind exclusive rights once a game or agency tries to monetize it. Plaintiffs in Spyder treat Thaler and Copyright Office guidance as answering that question “no” when the image is machine-determined; the defendant later asserted human creative contributions and trademark theories, which remain pending.26

Jurisdiction for the character-ownership fight is U.S. federal copyright (and, on the docket, trademark) law in the Northern District of California.6 Authority level for the human-authorship rule cited in the complaint is the D.C. Circuit’s statutory holding in Thaler, which is persuasive outside the D.C. Circuit and was applied on a record in which the applicant listed a machine as sole author.3 The Copyright Office’s 2023 guidance and 2025 report are agency views: they treat prompt-only generation as uncopyrightable while leaving room for copyright in human selection, arrangement, or modification of AI output.45

Spyder’s complaint is a declaratory-judgment action under 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201–2202 seeking a ruling that Mementum has no valid copyright in specified brainrots and that plaintiffs’ game use does not infringe.2 No merits ruling on that question is recorded on this page. If a court finds sufficient human authorship in names, stories, iterative prompting, or post-generation edits, the Thaler “autonomous machine author” fact pattern would not control. Trademark claims, if they proceed, would raise a different question—source identification—rather than authorship of the image itself.

Relationships¶

  • TOPIC-BRAIN-ROT cites SRC-OXFORD-BRAIN-ROT-WOTY-2024.
  • TOPIC-BRAIN-ROT related_to CASE-SPYDER-V-MEMENTUM.
  • TOPIC-BRAIN-ROT related_to CASE-THALER-V-PERLMUTTER.
  • TOPIC-BRAIN-ROT related_to TOPIC-AI-COPYRIGHT.

Sources¶

  1. SRC-OXFORD-BRAIN-ROT-WOTY-2024: Oxford University Press Word of the Year 2024 announcement.
  2. SRC-SPYDER-V-MEMENTUM-COMPLAINT: Spyder Games LLC v. Mementum Lab complaint.
  3. SRC-THALER-V-PERLMUTTER-CADC: Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025).
  4. SRC-USCO-AI-REGISTRATION-GUIDANCE-2023: Copyright Office AI registration guidance (2023).
  5. SRC-USCO-AI-COPYRIGHTABILITY-REPORT-2025: Copyright Office AI copyrightability report, Part 2 (2025).
  6. SRC-SPYDER-V-MEMENTUM-DOCKET: CourtListener docket, No. 5:25-cv-10248.

Research Debt¶

  • Obtain and summarize Mementum’s amended counterclaims and any covenant-not-to-sue filings from RECAP rather than secondary press.
  • Distinguish “Italian brainrot” character lore (creator-asserted names and stories) from prompt-only image generation with primary creator-side sources if those become part of a judicial record.
  • Document non-U.S. treatment of AI-generated meme characters (for example French or EU authorship rules) if Mementum continues to plead foreign rights.
  • Do not treat Oxford’s definition as a clinical finding; if a later page addresses cognitive-harm claims about short-form video, source those separately.

Document metadata¶

  • Last verified: 2026-08-22

  1. SRC-OXFORD-BRAIN-ROT-WOTY-2024 — Oxford University Press Word of the Year 2024 announcement. Official lexicographic source. â†©â†©â†©â†©â†©

  2. SRC-SPYDER-V-MEMENTUM-COMPLAINT — Spyder Games LLC v. Mementum Lab complaint (N.D. Cal. Nov. 26, 2025). Plaintiff allegations; not findings of fact. â†©â†©â†©â†©â†©â†©

  3. SRC-THALER-V-PERLMUTTER-CADC — Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025). Primary appellate authority. â†©â†©

  4. SRC-USCO-AI-REGISTRATION-GUIDANCE-2023 — 88 Fed. Reg. 16190 (Mar. 16, 2023). Agency registration guidance. â†©â†©

  5. SRC-USCO-AI-COPYRIGHTABILITY-REPORT-2025 — Copyright Office, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2 (Jan. 2025). Agency report; not a judicial holding. â†©â†©

  6. SRC-SPYDER-V-MEMENTUM-DOCKET — CourtListener docket for No. 5:25-cv-10248. Procedural record. â†©â†©â†©