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Which characters can you legally use in an AI video channel on YouTube from Europe?

Characters whose source works are out of copyright in both the EU and the US: Dracula, the Greek and Norse myths, Frankenstein's creature, the Grimm and Andersen tales, Pinocchio, Alice, Oz, Sherlock Holmes and similar figures, plus SCP Foundation material under its CC BY-SA licence. The source text is free; the famous film design, modern translations and registered trade marks often are not. The 2023-24 format of AI slideshows built on studio characters fails on both fronts: YouTube's monetisation rules and the studios' lawsuits against AI image companies.

Published 2026-10-19

The short answer

From Europe, the characters you can build a monetised AI video channel on are the ones whose source works are out of copyright in both the EU and the US. In the EU, a work is protected for the author's life plus 70 years. In the US, works published before 1978 are protected for at most 95 years from publication. A character that passes both tests includes Dracula, Odysseus and the Greek gods, Thor and the Norse myths, Frankenstein's creature, the Grimm and Andersen tales, Pinocchio, Alice, Dorothy and the Oz cast, Peter Pan from Barrie's book, Sherlock Holmes, Sun Wukong, Robin Hood, King Arthur, Don Quixote, the figures of the Thousand and One Nights and anonymous folklore, including Romanian folklore.

Three traps sit on top of that list. The character is free but the famous screen design is not, and image models reproduce that design without being asked. A character can be out of copyright and still be a registered trade mark. And public domain status differs between the EU and the US, so a character that is free in the US can still be protected where you work. This article explains each, with the dates checked against the statutes, court decisions and the EU trade mark register. It is desk research, not legal advice; where a point is interpretation, we say so.

Why the 2023-24 slideshow format stopped working

The wave that followed the "Harry Potter by Balenciaga" videos used AI still images of famous protected characters, cut into slideshows, often titled "X but in Y". Two things changed since then. On 15 July 2025, YouTube renamed its "repetitious content" monetisation policy to inauthentic content. YouTube called it a minor update. The policy text lists, as not allowed, "image slideshows, templated storylines, or scrolling text with minimal or no narrative, commentary, or educational value" and "AI-generated content made with generic or unoriginal templates giving the impression of mass production". The review applies to the channel as a whole, under the YouTube Partner Program, and is separate from copyright enforcement.

The second change is legal. On 11 June 2025, Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century and Universal with DreamWorks sued Midjourney in the US District Court for the Central District of California (case 2:25-cv-05275). The complaint names Darth Vader, Elsa, Buzz Lightyear, Shrek, the Minions and Homer Simpson, and says that a simple text prompt naming a character returns an image of it. It also targets Midjourney's then upcoming video service. Press reports say Warner Bros. Discovery filed a similar suit later in 2025 and the cases were consolidated. As of July 2026 reporting, the case was still in discovery, with no ruling on fair use. Whatever the outcome, the studios have shown they treat AI images of their characters as infringing copies. A channel that monetises those images is the easiest target in that chain.

The policy point is narrower than it is often reported. YouTube does not ban slideshows or AI. It removes monetisation from channels whose videos look templated and mass-produced. A video with movement, a story and an original song is a different case from a still-image slideshow, but YouTube decides at the channel level and does not publish a threshold.

How to calculate public domain in the EU and the US

EU rule. Directive 2006/116/EC sets the term at the author's life plus 70 years, counted from 1 January of the year after death. Romania applies the same rule in Law 8/1996 (article 28 for the term, article 34 for counting from 1 January). For films, the EU term ends 70 years after the death of the last survivor among the principal director, the screenwriter, the author of the dialogue and the composer of music written for the film.

US rule. For works published before 1978 that kept their copyright, the term is 95 years from publication (17 U.S.C. section 304), and every term runs to the end of the calendar year. So works published in 1930 entered the US public domain on 1 January 2026, and works from 1931 enter it on 1 January 2027.

Worked examples. Sherlock Holmes: Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, so his works have been free in the EU since 1 January 2001. In the US, the last ten stories stayed protected until The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes expired, and all the Holmes works were free from 1 January 2023. In 2014 the Seventh Circuit ruled in Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate that the elements in the already-free stories could be used without a licence. Peter Pan: J. M. Barrie died in 1937, so the EU term ended on 31 December 2007. In the US, the 1911 novel has been free since 1967 and the play since 2024, because its script was first published in 1928. Tintin: Hergé died in 1983, so Tintin stays protected in the EU until the end of 2053, even though the first Tintin entered the US public domain in 2025. Steamboat Willie: the 1928 Mickey entered the US public domain on 1 January 2024. Its EU status is harder; see "Where the reports were wrong".

The 1931 Universal films. Universal's Dracula and Frankenstein, both from 1931, reach the end of the 95-year US term on 31 December 2026, provided their copyright was renewed. We did not check the renewal record. In the EU, the term of the films depends on when the director, the screenwriters and the composer died, so it does not end at the same time. Later Universal films stay protected longer in both systems.

The list: characters free in both the EU and the US

Gothic and classic monsters. Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1847-1912, novel published 1897) and Frankenstein's creature (Mary Shelley, 1797-1851, novel published 1818). Dracula carries a Romanian angle that no other country's channel has. The novel is free; the cape, slicked hair and accent of the 1931 film, and the flat head and neck bolts of Universal's creature, are later studio additions.

Myth and epic. The Greek gods and heroes, Odysseus and the whole cast of the Odyssey (Circe, Poseidon, the Cyclops, the Sirens, Penelope), the Norse gods from the medieval Eddas, and Sun Wukong from Journey to the West, a classic Chinese novel. Homer and the Eddas are free; recent translations of them are not.

Tales and children's classics. The Grimm brothers (Jacob died 1863, Wilhelm 1859), Hans Christian Andersen (died 1875), Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi, died 1890), Alice (Lewis Carroll, died 1898), Oz (L. Frank Baum, died 1919, first book 1900) and Peter Pan from Barrie's book, with the UK caveat explained below. Snow White, the Little Mermaid and Pinocchio are free as stories. Their Disney look is not.

Legend and literature. Robin Hood and King Arthur, both medieval legends with no single author, Don Quixote (Cervantes, died 1616), the Thousand and One Nights (Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad), Sherlock Holmes, and anonymous folklore. Romanian folklore fits here: Făt-Frumos, the zmei and Muma Pădurii are traditional figures. Folk tales are free; a modern writer's retelling and an illustrator's drawings of them are protected like any other work.

Odysseus and the 2026 film. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, released by Universal on 17 July 2026 with Matt Damon as Odysseus, made the myth a search trend. Homer's poem is free; the film is not. That rules out its frames, costumes, poster style and music, and an Odysseus who looks like Matt Damon or any other actor. A realistic AI likeness of a real person also triggers YouTube's disclosure rule for content that makes a real person appear to say or do something. A descriptive title such as "Odysseus but in Tokyo" is fine in our reading, as long as nothing in the title, thumbnail or description suggests a link to the film.

Trap 1: the character is free, the famous design is not

When a book is free but a film built on it is not, the film's additions stay protected. In Warner Bros. v. X One X Productions (2011), the Eighth Circuit held that the copyrights in the 1939 Wizard of Oz film cover the increments of character expression that go beyond the books, and that new products evoking the film characters infringed even when built from public domain publicity images. The court pointed to Dorothy's distinctive blue dress, bow and ruby slippers. In Baum's 1900 book, Dorothy's shoes are silver. The same logic applies to Disney's Snow White, Pinocchio and Peter Pan and to Universal's monsters.

The practical problem is that image and video models default to the famous version. A 2024 study presented at ICLR 2025 found that state-of-the-art image and video models can generate copyrighted characters without their names in the prompt, sometimes from only two generic keywords: "videogame, plumber" produced Nintendo's Mario. The authors found prompt rewriting alone insufficient and recommend adding negative prompts. In practice that means describing the original look from the source text (Stoker's Dracula is an old man with a long white moustache), asking for an original design, and naming in negative prompts the studio features you must avoid. Then check every frame by eye.

Translations are a second version of the same trap. The English Pinocchio on Project Gutenberg is Carol Della Chiesa's translation, and she died in 1972. In the EU that translation is protected until the end of 2042, even though Collodi's Italian text is free. For narration or lyrics, work from the original-language text, a translation whose translator died more than 70 years ago, or your own translation.

Trap 2: a trade mark is not a copyright

Copyright expires; a trade mark lasts as long as it is renewed and used. On the day we checked, the EU trade mark register, through TMview, listed registered EU marks for TARZAN and TARZAN OF THE APES held by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., including in class 9, which covers recordings and downloadable media, and class 41, entertainment services. It listed CONAN and CONAN THE CIMMERIAN held by Conan Properties International. Yet Burroughs died in 1950 and Robert E. Howard in 1936, so their stories are free in the EU, and Project Gutenberg hosts Tarzan of the Apes and Howard's Conan stories as US public domain texts.

The register also lists SHERLOCK HOLMES marks held by Conan Doyle Estate Limited, in class 41 among others, and PETER PAN marks held both by Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity and by Disney. MICKEY MOUSE is registered by Disney in classes 9 and 41. DRACULA appears in several registrations held by unrelated companies for goods such as food, spirits and games. No one holds the character, but some uses of the name are taken.

What this means in practice, in our reading: telling a story about Tarzan or Sherlock Holmes in a video is a use of public domain material. Using the name as the brand of your channel, a product line or merchandise is trade mark territory. Keep protected names out of the channel name and logo, use them descriptively in titles, and never suggest an official link. A trade mark lawyer should check any name you plan to build a brand on.

Peter Pan in the UK: a royalty, not a ban

Peter Pan has a special status in UK law. Schedule 6 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 gives Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity a right to a royalty for any public performance, commercial publication or communication to the public of the whole or a substantial part of Barrie's play Peter Pan, or of an adaptation of it. It is a right to be paid, not a right to stop the use; if the parties do not agree on the amount, the Copyright Tribunal sets it.

Whether a YouTube video based on the 1911 novel rather than the play counts as an adaptation of the play is a question of interpretation we could not settle at a primary source. Combined with the PETER PAN trade marks, it makes Peter Pan the one entry on the list where we would check with a lawyer before a series reaches viewers in the UK.

SCP, Minecraft and the AI models themselves

SCP Foundation. Content from the SCP Wiki is published under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Commercial use is allowed, including on YouTube. You must credit the article and its author's name or screen name, link to the source and release your video under the same CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, which means others may reuse it. The wiki's licensing guide names exceptions: the old SCP-173 image, based on Izumi Kato's sculpture "Untitled 2004", is not under the licence and should not be used commercially.

Minecraft. Mojang's usage guidelines allow videos and streams of Minecraft gameplay to earn ad revenue, if the video is free to view and adds enough original content, such as your own commentary. The guidelines define sharing with others as commercial use even when it is free, and forbid anything that suggests the content is official. They say nothing about AI-generated Minecraft characters. Our reading is that an AI video of Steve or a Creeper is not gameplay footage and is not covered by the permission, and Mojang states that all permissions can be revoked at any time.

Licences of the video models. The tool needs checking too, not only the character. The licence of Tencent's HunyuanVideo states that it does not apply in the European Union, the United Kingdom or South Korea, so a European operator has no licence to use it. Wan 2.2 from Wan-AI is published under Apache 2.0, which allows commercial use, with use restrictions listed on its model page.

Where the reports were wrong

1. "Steamboat Willie is free only in the US." Our starting notes, like many news reports, said the 1928 Mickey is protected in the EU. The EU directive has a rule of the shorter term: for a work whose country of origin is outside the EU and whose author is not an EU national, the EU term ends when the term in the country of origin ends. The author of Duke University's Public Domain Day 2024 page reads this as making the 1928 Mickey public domain in the UK and much of the EU, with Germany an exception because of special rules. Romania's law refers foreign works to the treaties Romania is party to (article 202), and we did not find an explicit transposition of the rule there. The copyright question is less settled than the notes said. The practical answer does not change: Disney holds registered EU marks for MICKEY MOUSE in classes 9 and 41.

2. "A slideshow means near-certain demonetisation." The notes said the policy names static slideshows textually. It names image slideshows "with minimal or no narrative, commentary, or educational value", and YouTube applies the policy to the channel as a whole. The format is high-risk, not automatically excluded.

3. "Sherlock Holmes is fully free." The copyright dates in the notes were right: free in the EU since 2001 and in the US since 2023. The notes missed that Conan Doyle Estate Limited holds registered EU marks for SHERLOCK HOLMES, including in class 41. Trap 2 applies to Holmes as well, not only to Tarzan and Conan.

4. "Minecraft allows monetisation." The permission covers gameplay videos with original content and ad revenue. It does not mention AI-generated images of Minecraft characters, so it should not be read as a licence for them.

5. Peter Pan listed as simply free. It is free in the EU and the US. The UK royalty right and the PETER PAN marks make it the exception on the list.

Method

We started from our own working notes on relaunching an AI character channel on public domain material, which listed candidate characters and three traps. On 19 October 2026 we checked each point at a primary source: YouTube's monetisation policy page, the Disney and Universal complaint against Midjourney, Directive 2006/116/EC on EUR-Lex, 17 U.S.C. section 304, Romania's Law 8/1996 on the official legislation portal, Schedule 6 of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Duke University's Public Domain Day pages for 2023, 2024 and 2025 (the 2023 page for the Sherlock Holmes dates and the Klinger case), the Eighth Circuit's 2011 opinion in Warner Bros. v. X One X, the ICLR 2025 study on copyrighted characters, Mojang's usage guidelines, the SCP Wiki licensing guide, and the HunyuanVideo and Wan 2.2 licences. Author life dates and the Oz silver shoes come from Project Gutenberg records and text. Trade marks were checked as EU trade marks on TMview on the same day.

We could not verify, and left out: the live status of the US trade mark registrations for Tarzan and Conan (the US register refused our requests), the renewal records of the 1931 Universal films, and the outcome of the Midjourney case. The case status rests on press reports from July 2026. We searched only EU trade marks; national marks in individual member states were not checked.

Limitations

This is a summary of rules and records, not legal advice, and copyright for characters turns on facts. The rule of the shorter term and the scope of the Peter Pan royalty are matters of interpretation. Trade mark registers change and our snapshot is from one day. YouTube's monetisation decisions are made by reviewers at the channel level and are not published as thresholds, so no list of characters can guarantee monetisation. Public domain status also says nothing about defamation, personality rights of real people, or the separate rights in music used in a video.

Sources

1. YouTube Help: YouTube channel monetization policies (inauthentic content, 15 July 2025 update)
2. YouTube Help: Disclosing use of altered or synthetic content
3. Disney Enterprises et al. v. Midjourney, complaint, C.D. Cal. No. 2:25-cv-05275 (filed 11 June 2025)
4. EUR-Lex: Directive 2006/116/EC on the term of protection of copyright
5. 17 U.S.C. section 304: Duration of copyright, subsisting copyrights
6. Legea nr. 8/1996 privind dreptul de autor și drepturile conexe (republicată)
7. UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Schedule 6 (Peter Pan)
8. Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain: Public Domain Day 2024
9. Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain: Public Domain Day 2025
10. Warner Bros. Entertainment v. X One X Productions, 644 F.3d 584 (8th Cir. 2011), opinion text
11. He et al., Fantastic Copyrighted Beasts and How (Not) to Generate Them, arXiv 2406.14526 (ICLR 2025)
12. Minecraft Usage Guidelines (Mojang)
13. SCP Wiki: Licensing Guide
14. TMview (EUIPO trade mark data): search for TARZAN in EU trade marks
15. Tencent HunyuanVideo: LICENSE

Questions and answers

Can I monetise AI videos of Harry Potter or Disney characters on YouTube?

Not safely. Those characters are protected by copyright and trade marks, the studios are suing AI image companies over exactly these outputs, and YouTube's inauthentic content policy targets templated slideshows. The risk is claims, strikes and loss of monetisation across the whole channel.

Is Dracula in the public domain in Europe?

Yes. Bram Stoker died in 1912 and the novel was published in 1897, so it is free in the EU and the US. The look from Universal's 1931 film is a separate work, and several companies hold EU trade marks on the word DRACULA for specific goods. Design your own Dracula from the novel.

Can I make videos about Odysseus after Nolan's The Odyssey?

Yes, from Homer. The myth is public domain; the 2026 Universal film is not. Avoid its frames, costumes, poster style and music, do not make Odysseus resemble Matt Damon or any actor, and do not suggest a link to the film in titles or thumbnails.

Is Sherlock Holmes public domain in both the EU and the US?

Yes for copyright: free in the EU since 2001 and in the US since 2023, when the last stories expired. But Conan Doyle Estate Limited holds registered EU trade marks for SHERLOCK HOLMES, so do not use the name as your channel brand.

Can I use SCP Foundation characters commercially?

Yes, under CC BY-SA 3.0. Credit the article, its author and the wiki with a link, and release your video under the same licence. Avoid the old SCP-173 image, which the wiki says is not licensed for commercial use.

Do I need to label AI videos of public domain characters on YouTube?

Only for realistic content, such as making a real person appear to say or do something or a realistic scene that never happened. Clearly fantastical or animated content does not need the label, and YouTube says disclosure alone does not affect monetisation.

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