A federal judge has ruled that works of art created by generative AI cannot be copyrighted, in a move upholding a previous finding by the U.S. Copyright Office.
The ruling came as another blow to Stephen Thaler, who had applied for a copyright for an image, “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” that had been created by Creativity Machine, a piece of software he developed. In the application, Creativity Machine was listed as the author of the piece of art. This is at least the third time Thaler’s application has been rejected.
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As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, ruling judge U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said that “works generated by new forms of technology operating absent any guiding human hand” have never been protected by copyright law.
“In the absence of any human involvement in the creation of the work, the clear and straightforward answer is the one given by the Register: No,” wrote Howell. “The Copyright Office denied the application on the basis that the work ‘lack[ed] the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim,’ noting that copyright law only extends to works created by human beings.”
As the emergence of AI-generated works is still in its infancy, the laws are not as clear-cut as one might think. Earlier this year, the U.S. Copyright Office said it is open to granting protection to AI-generated works on a “case-by-case” basis, depending on how much (or little) a human had in directly contributing to the work.
