[co-author: Sima Lotfi]
On August 18, 2023, the US District Court for the District of Columbia (the Court) ruled in Thaler v. Register of Copyrights that an AI-generated work “absent any guiding human hand” is not protected by copyright, explaining that “[h]uman authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.” The Court’s ruling affirmed the US Copyright Office’s (the Office) decision that artwork created solely by the “Creativity Machine,” an artificial intelligence computer system, is not eligible for copyright protection. The ruling has implications for generative AI and users of AI tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and DALL-E.
The ruling marks the most recent volley in a series of disputes between Dr. Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist, and the world’s prominent intellectual property regimes. In past cases, Dr. Thaler has argued that his “Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience” should be considered an inventor for patent purposes. That position was rejected by courts in the United States, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, which have all so far held that only natural persons can be considered inventors.
In this case, Dr. Thaler sought to register an AI-generated artwork with the Office:
The work in question: "A Recent Entry to Paradise" by Dr. Thaler's Creativity Machine