Children Copying Ideas: Kids Hate Copycats by 5. What About AI?

Research on children copying ideas has a clear headline: kids dislike copycats by about age 5. Show a 5- or 6-year-old two cartoon characters, one who drew an original picture and one who copied it, and they’ll tell you the copier is worse. That holds in the United States, Mexico and China.

The twist is what kids value most. By 6, children tend to give credit to whoever had the idea, even over whoever did the work. So when your 8-year-old types “a dragon riding a skateboard” and an AI draws it, they may sincerely believe they made it. They had the idea, after all. Understanding that instinct is the key to teaching honest credit for AI.

Key Takeaways

• In Olson and Shaw’s studies (Developmental Science, 2011), children 5 and older disliked plagiarizers compared with original drawers and explained it by pointing to the copying. Three- and four-year-olds didn’t.
• Yang and colleagues (2014) found 5- and 6-year-olds in the US, Mexico and China all judged copiers negatively, despite cultural differences in how ideas are protected.
• By age 6, children favored the person who contributed an idea over the person who contributed only labor when deciding who owns a picture (Li, Shaw & Olson, 2013).
• Adults lean the other way: in seven studies with 1,463 people, adults gave more ownership to the laborer than the idea giver (Burgmer et al., 2019).
• The US Copyright Office says AI outputs are protectable only where a human determined the expressive elements, “not the mere provision of prompts.”

What the research on children copying ideas found

The core finding comes from Kristina Olson and Alex Shaw, then at Yale. In “‘No fair, copycat!’” (Developmental Science, 2011), they showed children characters who either made an original drawing, drew an identical picture by chance, or copied another character’s drawing.

• Children aged 7, 9 and 11, and adults, disliked the plagiarizer compared with both the original drawer and the accidental match.
• Children aged 5 and 6 also judged plagiarizers negatively. Three- and four-year-olds did not.
• When asked why, kids pointed to the copying itself.

The authors’ conclusion: “by age 5 years old, children understand that others have ideas and dislike the copying of these ideas.” The accidental-match condition matters. Kids weren’t just objecting to two pictures looking the same. They were objecting to someone taking an idea.

Fan Yang, Alex Shaw, E. Garduno and Kristina Olson then asked whether this was an American quirk. In the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2014), they showed the same kind of videos to 3- to 6-year-olds in the United States, Mexico and China, three countries that “differ in terms of their emphasis on the protection of intellectual property and ideas.” The result: “5- and 6-year-olds from all three cultures evaluated copiers negatively compared with unique drawers.” The sense that copying is unfair seems to show up early and widely.

Ideas versus labor: what kids think makes something yours

A second line of research complicates the picture in a useful way.

Kids credit the idea. Vivian Li, Alex Shaw and Kristina Olson (Cognition, 2013) tested whether children value ideas or labor more. Four- and six-year-olds preferred pictures containing their ideas to pictures containing their labor. In a third-party test, 6-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, gave ownership to someone who only contributed an idea over someone who only did the drawing. “By 6 years old, children value ideas over labor.”

But creative work also counts. Patricia Kanngiesser, Nathalia Gjersoe and Bruce Hood (Psychological Science, 2010) found that when someone reshaped a borrowed clay object, participants were more likely to say ownership moved to the person who invested creative labor, and the effect was “significantly stronger in preschool children than in adults.” Note the word creative: holding or slightly changing the object didn’t transfer ownership.

Adults weigh labor more. Pascal Burgmer, Matthias Forstmann and Olga Stavrova ran seven studies with 1,463 adults (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2019). “Contrary to what has been reported for children,” adults valued the laborer’s contribution more than the idea giver’s, for art and for business, and even legal professionals did. Perceived effort drove the effect.

Put those together and you have a real mismatch. A young child’s intuition says the person with the idea owns the result. An adult’s intuition says the person who did the work does. AI splits those two roles cleanly: the kid supplies the idea in a prompt, and the machine does all the execution.

When the copier is AI: three ways kids might see it

This part is our reading of how the research applies, not a tested finding. No published study we found has asked children directly who owns an AI-made picture.

1. “I made it, it was my idea.” Given Li and colleagues’ results, a 6- to 9-year-old who prompted an image may feel it’s theirs in the same way a picture built from their idea was theirs in the lab. That’s sincere, not dishonest. It’s also a different standard than their teacher, a contest or the law will apply.

2. “The AI copied someone.” Kids already dislike copycats. Many will find it interesting, and fair-minded, to learn that image and text generators learn patterns from huge amounts of existing human work. Whether that counts as “copying” is a live legal and ethical argument among adults. Kids can handle the honest version: the AI learned from other people’s pictures, and some artists object to that.

3. “Then who gets the credit?” This is where the US Copyright Office is useful. Its January 2025 report concluded that generative AI outputs can be protected by copyright “only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements,” which can include a human’s creative arrangement or modification of the output, “but not the mere provision of prompts.” Translation for kids: the idea alone doesn’t make you the author of what the machine produced. What you add, choose, change and arrange does. For more, see our explainer on who owns what AI makes.

Who gets credit: how kids, adults and the law weigh it

Scenario	Young child’s likely view (Li et al., 2013)	Adult’s likely view (Burgmer et al., 2019)	US Copyright Office (2025)
Kid has idea, a friend draws it	Kid owns it	Friend deserves more credit	Friend is the author of the drawing
Kid copies a friend’s drawing	Copying is unfair (Olson & Shaw, 2011)	Copying is unfair	The friend’s work, not the kid’s
Kid reshapes a friend’s clay figure creatively	Kid now owns it (Kanngiesser et al., 2010)	Weaker transfer	Depends on how much is new
Kid types a prompt, AI draws	Possibly “mine, my idea” (our inference)	AI did the work	Prompt alone not enough for authorship
Kid draws, then uses AI to adjust colors	Mine	Mostly mine	Human expression remains
Kid writes story, AI illustrates	Story mine; pictures unclear	Story mine; pictures AI’s	Text protectable; AI images alone not

The left column isn’t wrong. It’s a 6-year-old’s honest fairness rule applied to a situation it wasn’t built for. Your job is to add the missing piece: doing the work counts too.

How to use kids’ fairness instincts at home

Start with the copycat game

Kids already know copying is unfair. Ask: “If your friend traced your drawing and said they made it, would that be fair?” Almost every child says no. Then: “What if a computer made a picture from your words? Who made it?” Let them argue. You’re not looking for a right answer yet. You’re connecting a rule they already hold to a new case.

Separate “my idea” from “I made it”

Teach two phrases and use them often. “This was my idea” and “I made this.” Both can be true, and both are worth being proud of. With AI, the honest version is usually “My idea, and the AI drew it.” That keeps the pride in the idea without claiming the labor. Kids who learn this young have an easier time later with school disclosure rules.

Make the work part theirs too

The adult research says effort earns credit, and so does the copyright standard. So add real work to any AI project: your kid edits, arranges, combines, draws over, writes the captions, builds the comic layout. The more they shape, the more of the result is honestly theirs. Our piece on why building it yourself feels better explains why that labor also makes kids value the result more.

Talk about where AI learned to draw

Explain simply: the AI learned by studying huge numbers of pictures and texts made by people. Some of those people weren’t asked. Kids who hate copycats will have opinions, and that’s fine. It builds a habit of asking where things come from, which is the root of good citation later.

What not to do

Don’t call your 7-year-old a liar for saying “I made it” about an AI picture. By the research, they may be using an honest rule (ideas count most) that simply doesn’t match the adult world’s. Correct the label, not the character: “You had the idea. The AI did the drawing. Let’s say both.”

What to Watch For Over the Next 3 Months

• Week 4: Your kid uses “my idea” and “I made it” correctly at least some of the time, about AI and non-AI work alike.
• Month 2 red flags: Claiming AI work as fully their own in places where it matters, like a class contest, or losing interest in making things by hand because the AI “does it better.” Both are worth a calm conversation about credit and effort.
• Month 3 self-check: Can your kid explain, in their own words, why copying a friend’s drawing is unfair and how that connects to AI? Do their AI projects include parts they clearly made themselves?

Frequently Asked Questions

At what age do kids understand copying is wrong?

Around age 5. In Olson and Shaw’s studies, 5- and 6-year-olds judged copiers negatively and explained it by pointing to the copying, while 3- and 4-year-olds didn’t. A cross-cultural study found the same pattern in the US, Mexico and China. Younger kids still copy freely, and that’s a normal stage.

Is it bad if my child copies other kids’ drawings?

Copying for practice is how many artists learn, and it isn’t the problem. The issue is claiming copied work as your own idea. Encourage your kid to say “I copied this from Maya’s drawing to practice” and to make their own version next. That keeps practice and honesty together.

My kid says the AI picture is theirs because it was their idea. Are they wrong?

Partly. Research shows 6-year-olds tend to credit whoever had the idea, so the feeling is genuine. Adults and the US Copyright Office give more weight to who did the expressive work, and say a prompt alone doesn’t make someone the author. Teach “my idea, the AI drew it.”

Does AI copy other people’s work?

AI image and text generators learn patterns from large amounts of existing human-made work. Whether that counts as copying is debated in courts and among artists. AI doesn’t usually paste an existing picture, but it can produce work close to an existing style or image. Tell kids the honest version and let them think about fairness.

How do I explain AI credit to a young child?

Use their own fairness rule. “If you have the idea and your friend does the drawing, you both helped. Who should get credit?” Then swap in the AI as the “friend.” Most kids land on sharing credit, which is a good starting point.

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About the author

Ricky Flores is the founder of HiWave Makers and an electrical engineer with 15+ years of experience building consumer technology at Apple, Samsung, and Texas Instruments. He writes about how kids learn to build, think, and create in a tech-saturated world. Read more at hiwavemakers.com.

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Sources

1. Olson, K. R., & Shaw, A. (2011). “‘No fair, copycat!’: what children’s response to plagiarism tells us about their understanding of ideas.” Developmental Science, 14(2), 431-439. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.00993.x
2. Yang, F., Shaw, A., Garduno, E., & Olson, K. R. (2014). “No one likes a copycat: A cross-cultural investigation of children’s response to plagiarism.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 121, 111-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2013.11.008
3. Li, V., Shaw, A., & Olson, K. R. (2013). “Ideas versus labor: What do children value in artistic creation?” Cognition, 127(1), 38-45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.11.001
4. Kanngiesser, P., Gjersoe, N., & Hood, B. M. (2010). “The effect of creative labor on property-ownership transfer by preschool children and adults.” Psychological Science, 21(9), 1236-1241. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610380701
5. Burgmer, P., Forstmann, M., & Stavrova, O. (2019). “Ideas are cheap: When and why adults value labor over ideas.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(5), 824-844. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000473
6. U.S. Copyright Office. (2025, January 29). “Copyright Office Releases Part 2 of Artificial Intelligence Report.” https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2025/1060.html