US Appeals Court Rejects Copyright for AI-Generated Art, Affirming Human Authorship Requirement

Judge disses Star Trek icon Data's poetry while ruling AI can't author works

A computer scientist who tried to register an artwork that credited an artificial intelligence system as the sole author lost his appeal on Tuesday. A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously agreed with the Copyright Office that Stephen Thaler's AI software cannot be granted authorship. Copyright law "requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being," Judge Patricia Millett wrote in her opinion. "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," Millett wrote. Thaler had tried to argue that copyright laws were woefully outdated, and laws should change to copyright works made by a generative AI software that he created called the "Creativity Machine." He further claimed that "judicial opinions 'from the Gilded Age' could not settle the question of whether computer-generated works are copyrightable today." Nowhere in the Copyright Act is "author" defined, Thaler argued, potentially leaving room for today's courts to interpret the statute as permitting wholly AI-generated works to be copyrighted. Throwing the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of "author" at the court, Thaler invited the court to land on a looser interpretation than the Copyright Office was willing to make. If the court did not take his side, Thaler fretted that artists wouldn't be incentivized to use AI to produce creative works, defeating the purpose of copyright laws, he argued. "Nothing in the Copyright Act requires human creation," Thaler argued in court last January, Reuters reported. "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." But Millett pushed back, writing that "statutory construction requires more than just finding a sympathetic dictionary definition." "The text of multiple provisions of the statute indicates that authors must be humans, not machines," the judge said, pointing to numerous examples. Machines don't have lives or spouses, judge noted Perhaps most glaringly, the duration of copyright is typically limited to "the author's lifespan or to a period that approximates how long a human might live," Millett wrote. "Of course, machines do not have 'lives,' nor is the length of their operability generally measured in the same terms as a human life," Millett wrote. Additionally, the judge noted that the statute allows copyrights to be transferred to surviving spouses or children, which machines do not have. It also refers to authors' domiciles and nationalities, which machines do not have. And critically, authors granted copyrights have intentions, whereas "machines lack minds and do not intend anything," Millett wrote. Accepting Thaler's arguments would mean "problematic questions would arise about a machine's 'life' and 'death,'" Millett wrote. "And 'machine' would inconsistently mean both an author and a tool used by authors." Judge mocks Data's poetry, says machines can't be authors In the court's view, the statute considers machines to always be tools, never authors. That includes Thaler's Creativity Machine, Millett wrote. She urged that Thaler's arguments would be best made to Congress or the Copyright Office, not to courts. However, according to the judge, "the Creativity Machine does not represent the limits of human technical ingenuity when it comes to artificial intelligence," and Congress or the Copyright Office could adapt laws or guidance if "humans at some point might produce creative non-humans capable" of being incentivized to create artworks, as humans are. To support her vision of some future technology, Millett pointed to the Star Trek: The Next Generation character Data, a sentient android who memorably wrote a poem to his cat, which is jokingly mocked by other characters in a 1992 episode called "Schisms." StarTrek.com posted the full poem, but here's a taste: "Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature, / An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature; / Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses / Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses. I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations, / A singular development of cat communications / That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection / For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection." Data "might be worse than ChatGPT at writing poetry," but his "intelligence is comparable to that of a human being," Millet wrote. If AI ever reached Data levels of intelligence, Millett suggested that copyright laws could shift to grant copyrights to AI-authored works. But that time is apparently not now. "There will be time enough for Congress and the Copyright Office to tackle those issues when they arise," Millett wrote. In the meantime, Millett said that copyright laws leave plenty of room for artists to copyright AI-assisted works, dismissing Thaler's fears that denying a copyright to a work generated by his Creativity Machine would discourage artists broadly from using AI. But Thaler is not planning to back down from the fight, arguing that his Creativity Machine is "sentient." Thaler's attorney, Ryan Abbott, told Reuters that he and Thaler "strongly disagree" with the ruling and intend to appeal.

US appeals court says AI authors don't qualify for copyright

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has affirmed a lower court ruling that content created by an AI model without human input cannot be copyrighted. The plaintiff in this case is computer scientist Stephen Thaler, who developed a machine-learning system called the Creativity Machine that produced an image titled, A Recent Entrance to Paradise. Here it is in all its machine-generated glory... In 2018, on behalf of his AI system, Thaler asked the US Copyright Office to issue a copyright for the artwork. That application was rejected. The egghead asked the agency to reconsider that decision in 2019 and again in 2020. Both times, the Copyright Office refused, using the following reasoning: In 2022, Thaler took the matter to court, filing a complaint [PDF] against the US Copyright Office and its director Shira Perlmutter. Thaler argued that the Copyright Office could not distinguish between human-created and machine-made work, alleging that applicants may already have been granted copyrights for AI-generated work by misrepresenting the author as a person. His complaint also invoked top computer scientist Alan Turing's test of whether humans and machines can be differentiated during interrogation. "The real question is whether a machine can make something indistinguishable from a person for purposes of copyright protection," the complaint argued. "The answer, as an undisputed factual matter here, is yes." The US District Court for the District of Columbia was not much impressed by any of that and sided with the Copyright Office because the law and past precedent makes the case fairly straightforward. Judge Beryl Howell in a memorandum opinion [PDF] granted the US Copyright Office's motion for summary judgment, noting that copyrighted works require an author and only human authors have been recognized under US law. By listing AI as the author instead of himself, Thaler gave the Copyright Office all that it needed to reject the application. In November 2023, Thaler appealed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has now upheld the decision of the District Court. "We affirm the denial of Dr Thaler's copyright application," the appellate decision [PDF] states. "The Creativity Machine cannot be the recognized author of a copyrighted work because the Copyright Act of 1976 requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being." The Court of Appeals did, however, acknowledge that works made by a person with the assistance of AI can qualify for copyright, while also noting that no legal standard defines the amount of human participation necessary for such recognition. "Those line-drawing disagreements over how much artificial intelligence contributed to a particular human author's work are neither here nor there in this case," the appellate decision states. "That is because Dr Thaler listed the Creativity Machine as the sole author of the work before us, and it is undeniably a machine, not a human being." We asked Dr Thaler if he has any comment to share on the decision, and he referred us to his attorney; we'll let you know if we hear back on that front. ®

US appeals court rejects copyrights for AI-generated art lacking 'human' creator

March 18 - A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday affirmed that a work of art generated by artificial intelligence without human input cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed, opens new tab with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler's AI system "DABUS" was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted. Tuesday's decision marks the latest attempt by U.S. officials to grapple with the copyright implications of the fast-growing generative AI industry. The Copyright Office has separately rejected artists' bids for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney. The artists argued they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance -- unlike Thaler, who said that his "sentient" system created the image in his case independently. Thaler's attorney Ryan Abbott said he and his client "strongly disagree" with the ruling and intend to appeal. The Copyright Office said in a statement that it "believes the court reached the correct result." Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a copyright in 2018 covering "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," a piece of visual art he said was made by his AI system. The office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be copyrightable. A federal district court judge in Washington upheld the decision in 2023 and said human authorship is a "bedrock requirement of copyright" based on "centuries of settled understanding." Thaler told the D.C. Circuit that the ruling threatened to "discourage investment and labor in a critically new and important developing field." U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel on Tuesday that U.S. copyright law "requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being." "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," the appeals court said. Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington. Editing by David Bario, Leigh Jones and Mark Potter Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:United States Blake Brittain Thomson Reuters Blake Brittain reports on intellectual property law, including patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, for Reuters Legal. He has previously written for Bloomberg Law and Thomson Reuters Practical Law and practiced as an attorney.

Art created autonomously by AI cannot be copyrighted, federal appeals court rules

Despite the ruling, Abbott said he "was very pleased to see that the case has been successful in drawing public attention to these very important public policy issues." The Copyright Office first denied Thaler's application in August 2019, saying, "We cannot register this work because it lacks the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim." "According to your application this work was 'created autonomously by machine," the office said at the time. The office cited an 1884 ruling by the Supreme Court, which found that Congress had the right to extend copyright protection to a photograph, in that case one taken of the author Oscar Wilde. The office later rejected two requests by Thaler for reconsideration of its decision. After the second denial, in 2022, Thaler sued the office in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking to reverse the decision. District Court Judge Beryl Howell in August 2023 ruled in favor of the Copyright Office, writing, "Defendants are correct that human authorship is an essential part of a valid copyright claim." "Human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright," Howell wrote. Thaler then appealed Howell's ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In its decision Tuesday, the appeals panel wrote, "This case presents a question made salient by recent advances in artificial intelligence: Can a non-human machine be an author under the Copyright Act of 1976?" "The use of artificial intelligence to produce original work is rapidly increasing across industries and creative fields," the decision noted. "Who -- or what -- the 'author' of such work is a question that implicates important property rights undergirding growth and creative innovation." The ruling noted that Thaler had argued that the Copyright Office's human authorship requirement "is unconstitutional and unsupported by either statute or case law." Thaler also "claimed that judicial opinions 'from the Gilded Age' could not settle the question of whether computer generated works are copyrightable today," the ruling noted. But the appeals panel said that "authors are at the center of the Copyright Act," and that "traditional tools of statutory interpretation show that within the meaning of the Copyright Act, 'author' refers only to human beings." The panel said that the Copyright Office "formally adopted the human authorship requirement in 1973." That was six years after the office noted in its annual report to Congress that, "as computer technology develops and becomes more sophisticated, difficult questions of authorship are emerging." Abbott, the attorney who represented Thaler in the appeal, told CNBC that the Copyright Act "never says" that "you need a human author at all for a work ... or a named author." Abbott noted that corporations are granted copyrights, as are authors who are anonymous or pseudonymous.

US Court of Appeals Unanimously Denies Copyright Protection for AI-Created Images

A unanimous federal appeals court ruled that pictures generated solely by machines do not qualify for copyright protection. "The Copyright Act of 1976 requires all eligible work to be authorized in the first instance by a human being," said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The 3-0 court ruling, issued March 18, was written by Circuit Judge Patricia A. Millett, who was nominated by President Obama in 2013. Computer scientist Dr. Stephen Thaler created a generative artificial intelligence named "Creativity Machine," which made a picture that Thaler titled "A Recent Entrance to Paradise." The U.S. Copyright Office denied Thaler's application based on its requirement that work must be authored in the first instance by a human being. The copyright application listed Creativity Machine as the work's sole author. Thaler litigated. A federal court (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia) upheld the Copyright Office's denial; the federal appeals court affirmed the ruling of the federal district court. After the March 18 opinion from the federal appeals court, Thaler's attorney, Ryan Abbott, said he and his client "strongly disagree" with the ruling and intend to appeal. The Copyright Office said it "believes the court reached the correct result." The longstanding rationale of copyright is to ensure that easily reproducible work is protected, and individuals are incentivized to create original works that otherwise would be easily plagiarized. The Copyright Office adopted the human authorship requirement in 1973; Congress enacted the Copyright Act in 1976. The Copyright Office has allowed the registration of works made by human authors who use artificial intelligence. The debate over how much AI contributed to a human author's work was not the focus of the Thaler case because Thaler listed Creativity Machine as the sole author. Congress is key to changing copyright, the appeals court said. "Even if the human authorship requirement were at some point to stymie the creation of original work, that would be a policy for Congress to address," Judge Millett wrote in the 24-page opinion. The evolution of copyright protection has been at Congress' direction, not the courts "giving new meaning to settled statutory terms," the judge said. Technology changes are constant. "Photography, sound recordings, video recordings, and computer programs are all technologies that were once novel, but which copyright law now applies," Judge Millett said. Alicia Calzada, Deputy General Counsel of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), concurs. "The DC Circuit's well-reasoned holding is consistent with decades of copyright law and the holdings of other courts that have considered similar questions and found the same result -- that to be copyrightable, an expressive work must be created by a human. That is why several years ago, a court held that a selfie taken by a monkey was not copyrightable, and it is why images created solely by AI are not copyrightable," Calzada tells PetaPixel. "Judge Millett explained it best that, 'machines are tools, not authors.' Interpretations of the Copyright Act would be nonsensical if the 'author' could be a computer or other machine. Machines do not have children, they do not die, they do not have nationalities or hold property. All of these concepts referenced in copyright law would have absurd results if authorship was granted to a computer program, and courts are simply not allowed to re-interpret statutes or ignore portions of a statute."

Art created autonomously by AI cannot be copyrighted, federal appeals court rules

A federal appeals court ruled that art created autonomously by artificial intelligence cannot be copyrighted, saying that at least initial human authorship is required for a copyright. The "Copyright Office's longstanding rule requiring a human author ... does not prohibit copyrighting work that was made by or with the assistance of artificial intelligence," a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said in its unanimous ruling. "The rule requires only that the author of that work be a human being -- the person who created, operated, or use artificial intelligence -- and not the machine itself," the panel said. The panel noted that the Copyright Office "has allowed the registration of works made by human authors who use artificial intelligence." Copyright grants intellectual property protection to original works, giving their owners exclusive rights to reproduce the works, sell the works, rent them and display them. Tuesday's ruling hinged on the fact that Thaler listed the "Creativity Machine" as the sole "author" of "A Recent Entrance to Paradise" when he submitted a registration application to the Copyright Office in 2018. Thaler listed himself as the picture's owner in the application. Thaler told CNBC in an interview that the Creativity Machine created the painting "on its own" in 2012. The machine "learned cumulatively, and I was the parent, and I was basically tutoring it," Thaler said. "It actually generated [the painting] on its own as it mediated," said Thaler. He said his AI machines are "sentients" and "self-determining." Thaler's lawyer, Ryan Abbott, told CNBC in an interview said, "We do strongly disagree with the appeals court decision and plan to appeal it." Abbott said he would first ask the full judicial lineup of the Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case. If that appeal is unsuccessful, Abbott could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the issue. The attorney said the case detailed "the first publicized rejection" by the Copyright Office "on the basis" of the claim that a work was created by AI. That denial and the subsequent court rulings in the office's favor, "creates a huge shadow on the creative community" he said, because "it's not clear where the line is" delineating when a work created by or with the help of AI will be denied a copyright. Despite the ruling, Abbott said he "was very pleased to see that the case has been successful in drawing public attention to these very important public policy issues." The Copyright Office first denied Thaler's application in August 2019, saying, "We cannot register this work because it lacks the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim." "According to your application this work was 'created autonomously by machine," the office said at the time. The office cited an 1884 ruling by the Supreme Court, which found that Congress had the right to extend copyright protection to a photograph, in that case one taken of the author Oscar Wilde. The office later rejected two requests by Thaler for reconsideration of its decision. After the second denial, in 2022, Thaler sued the office in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking to reverse the decision. District Court Judge Beryl Howell in August 2023 ruled in favor of the Copyright Office, writing, "Defendants are correct that human authorship is an essential part of a valid copyright claim." "Human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright," Howell wrote. Thaler then appealed Howell's ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In its decision Tuesday, the appeals panel wrote, "This case presents a question made salient by recent advances in artificial intelligence: Can a non-human machine be an author under the Copyright Act of 1976?" "The use of artificial intelligence to produce original work is rapidly increasing across industries and creative fields," the decision noted. "Who -- or what -- the 'author' of such work is a question that implicates important property rights undergirding growth and creative innovation." The ruling noted that Thaler had argued that the Copyright Office's human authorship requirement "is unconstitutional and unsupported by either statute or case law." Thaler also "claimed that judicial opinions 'from the Gilded Age' could not settle the question of whether computer generated works are copyrightable today," the ruling noted. But the appeals panel said that "authors are at the center of the Copyright Act," and that "traditional tools of statutory interpretation show that within the meaning of the Copyright Act, 'author' refers only to human beings." The panel said that the Copyright Office "formally adopted the human authorship requirement in 1973." That was six years after the office noted in its annual report to Congress that, "as computer technology develops and becomes more sophisticated, difficult questions of authorship are emerging." Abbott, the attorney who represented Thaler in the appeal, told CNBC that the Copyright Act "never says" that "you need a human author at all for a work ... or a named author." Abbott noted that corporations are granted copyrights, as are authors who are anonymous or pseudonymous. Protecting a 'beautiful picture' The Copyright Office, in a statement to CNBC, said it "believes the court reached the correct result, affirming the Office's registration decision and confirming that human authorship is required for copyright." Thaler said that he will continue to pursue his bid for a copyright for the painting. "My personal goal is not to preserve the feeling of machines," Thaler said. "It's more to preserve, how should I say, orphaned intellectual property." "A machine creates a beautiful picture? There should be some protection for it," Thaler said.

Court rules copyrighting AI-generated art is a no-go - even if you invented the software - SiliconANGLE

Court rules copyrighting AI-generated art is a no-go - even if you invented the software A U.S. federal appeals court today ruled that art created solely by artificial intelligence cannot be granted copyright protection. A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was unanimous in saying there must be initial human authorship to be granted a copyright. The ruling upheld a decision by the U.S. Copyright Office, which denied computer scientist Stephen Thaler a copyright for the image, "A Recent Entrance to Paradise" (pictured). In 2018, Thaler attempted to register a copyright, stating that the author of the work was "Creativity Machine," a generative AI software that he himself had created. He left a note with the Copyright Office explaining that the work "was autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine" and that he was "seeking to register this computer-generated work as a work-for-hire to the owner of the Creativity Machine." Almost a year later, Thaler received a letter from a Copyright Office registration specialist who refused to register the claim, stating that the work "lacks the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim." Thaler argued that the human authorship requirement was "unconstitutional and unsupported by either statute or case law." The office doubled down on its contention after a re-evaluation, and Thaler sued in 2022. Using AI in the process of creating art is fine in terms of seeking copyright, but the machine cannot be the sole author. The panel explained, "The rule requires only that the author of that work be a human being -- the person who created, operated, or use artificial intelligence -- and not the machine itself." Thaler argued that the rules were outdated, arguing over the meaning of the word "author." He told the court, "Nothing in the Copyright Act requires human creation." He believed he was still the father of the work, telling NBC that the machine he had created "learned cumulatively, and I was the parent, and I was basically tutoring it." Ryan Abbott, Thaler's lawyer, called the ruling the "first publicized rejection" by the Copyright Office of a work created by AI. He believes this creates confusion since it isn't clear when art created by or partly by AI will be rebuffed by the office. As it stands, anything a person creates with AI can't be copyrighted, so it can be used freely by anyone else. For Thaler, this is a great pity. He told CNBC, "A machine creates a beautiful picture? There should be some protection for it."

Court ruling on AI-generated art | Newswise

A federal appeals court recently ruled that art created independently by artificial intelligence cannot be copyrighted, saying copyright protection requires a human being to author the work. University of Illinois Chicago-based AI policy and law experts Michael Bennett, associate vice chancellor for data science and artificial intelligence strategy, and Yolanda King, associate professor of law and director of the Center for Intellectual Property, Information and Privacy Law, can discuss the significance of the ruling, the likelihood that it will be appealed, and what the ruling ultimately means for AI in the creative process.

US Appeals Court Rejects Copyrights for AI-Generated Art Lacking 'Human' Creator

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday affirmed that a work of art generated by artificial intelligence without human input cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler's AI system "DABUS" was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted. Tuesday's decision marks the latest attempt by U.S. officials to grapple with the copyright implications of the fast-growing generative AI industry. The Copyright Office has separately rejected artists' bids for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney. The artists argued they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance -- unlike Thaler, who said that his "sentient" system created the image in his case independently. Thaler's attorney Ryan Abbott said he and his client "strongly disagree" with the ruling and intend to appeal. The Copyright Office said in a statement that it "believes the court reached the correct result." Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a copyright in 2018 covering "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," a piece of visual art he said was made by his AI system. The office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be copyrightable. A federal district court judge in Washington upheld the decision in 2023 and said human authorship is a "bedrock requirement of copyright" based on "centuries of settled understanding." Thaler told the D.C. Circuit that the ruling threatened to "discourage investment and labor in a critically new and important developing field." U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel on Tuesday that U.S. copyright law "requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being." "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," the appeals court said. (Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington. Editing by David Bario, Leigh Jones and Mark Potter)

US appeals court rejects copyrights for AI-generated art lacking 'human' creator

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday affirmed that a work of art generated by artificial intelligence without human input cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler's AI system "DABUS" was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted. Tuesday's decision marks the latest attempt by U.S. officials to grapple with the copyright implications of the fast-growing generative AI industry. The Copyright Office has separately rejected artists' bids for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney. The artists argued they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance -- unlike Thaler, who said that his "sentient" system created the image in his case independently. Thaler's attorney Ryan Abbott said he and his client "strongly disagree" with the ruling and intend to appeal. The Copyright Office said in a statement that it "believes the court reached the correct result." Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a copyright in 2018 covering "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," a piece of visual art he said was made by his AI system. The office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be copyrightable. A federal district court judge in Washington upheld the decision in 2023 and said human authorship is a "bedrock requirement of copyright" based on "centuries of settled understanding." Thaler told the D.C. Circuit that the ruling threatened to "discourage investment and labor in a critically new and important developing field." U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel on Tuesday that U.S. copyright law "requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being." "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," the appeals court said. (Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington. Editing by David Bario, Leigh Jones and Mark Potter)