Corrosion of metals leads to billions of dollars in losses each year. Surfactants are one of many ways of inhibiting corrosion of metals especially on hard to reach surfaces such as the inside of a pipe through which fluid is flowing. Despite the popularity of surfactants as corrosion inhibitors, the mechanisms by which they prevent corrosion are not well understood. As a model system, we use copper thin films supported on a gold coated silicon wafer to study surfactant corrosion inhibition. Corrosion times of the copper thin films in pH 3 hydrochloric acid (HCl) solutions containing different concentrations of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as the surfactant are determined by optical microscopy. We use liquid-cell atomic force microscopy to study the morphological changes of corroding copper thin films in-situ at the micro- and nanoscale. The morphology of resulting corrosion products is also determined ex-situ using scanning electron microscopy. Optical microscope experiments indicate that the amount of corrosion inhibition provided by the surfactant on copper films increases as the surfactant concentration in solution is increased until the bulk critical micelle concentration (CMC). Above this concentration the level of inhibition decreases as surfactant concentration is increased. The increase in amount of inhibition until the CMC is reached is expected because more surfactant in solution means more surfactant coverage on the corroding copper. However, the observed decrease in inhibition past the CMC is not expected. To explain this unexpected behavior, corrosion products formed on the copper thin films are investigated. The main corrosion product formed on the corroding copper film is cuprous oxide which forms a passivating layer that slows down the corrosion rate of the thin film. Changes in morphology and in the amount of the cuprous oxide formed on the corroding surface as a function of surfactant concentration are investigated as possible reasons for the dependence of corrosion inhibition on surfactant concentration.