US Appeals Court rejects AI copyright claim

A U.S. federal appeals court has upheld the decision of the Copyright Office to deny copyright protection for an artwork credited solely to artificial intelligence (AI), ruling that copyright law requires human authorship.

A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously rejected the appeal filed by computer scientist Stephen Thaler, who sought to register an artwork created by his AI system, the "Creativity Machine," without any human intervention.

Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the panel, stated that the Copyright Act's provisions are designed with human authors in mind. “Because many of the Copyright Act's provisions make sense only if an author is a human being, the best reading of the Copyright Act is that human authorship is required for registration,” she wrote.

Thaler argued that current copyright laws are outdated and should evolve to recognise works generated entirely by AI. He contended that the Copyright Act does not explicitly define "author," leaving room for courts to interpret the statute in a way that accommodates AI-generated works.

“Nothing in the Copyright Act requires human creation,” Thaler argued in court, according to Reuters. “What the Act’s language indicates is that when an entity, a natural person, a corporation, a machine—generates a creative work, that entity is the author.”

However, the court disagreed, with Millett noting that copyright law is structured around human attributes, such as lifespan, nationality, and intent, qualities that AI lacks. She pointed out that copyright duration is tied to the author’s lifespan, and rights can be transferred to surviving family members, which is not applicable to AI.

“The text of multiple provisions of the statute indicates that authors must be humans, not machines,” Millett wrote, adding that "machines lack minds and do not intend anything."

The ruling reinforces the longstanding legal position that AI-generated works cannot be copyrighted unless a human author is involved in the creative process. The court suggested that any changes to this framework would need to come from Congress or the Copyright Office rather than judicial rulings.

Millett acknowledged that advancements in AI could prompt future legal changes but maintained that under current laws, AI remains a tool rather than an author.

Thaler’s case is one of several legal challenges seeking to expand copyright protections to AI-generated content, an issue of growing relevance as generative AI becomes more advanced. The decision is likely to influence ongoing debates over intellectual property rights in AI-driven creativity, both in the United States and internationally.