Written by: Haim Ravia, Dotan Hammer
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision refusing copyright registration of an artwork created by Artificial Intelligence.
The appellant, Stephen Thaler, is no stranger to court cases focused on the copyrightability of AI-generated works. The computer scientist has repeatedly petitioned to have his various AIs legally recognized as authors, creators, or inventors for intellectual property rights. In 2019, Thaler attempted to register with the U.S. Copyright Office an AI-generated image for copyright. Thaler named his AI, “The Creativity Machine”, as the author of the work.
The Copyright Office refused to register the work because it had no human author. Thaler lost on appeal in the district court which stated that “[h]uman authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright”. Thaler was now also denied on the second appeal when the D.C. Circuit court stated that altering the human authorship requirement is a “policy argument for Congress to address”.
Click here to read the Court’s decision.
