AI art can't be copyrighted after SCOTUS lets lower court ruling stand

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case regarding the copyright eligibility of AI-generated art, leaving in place a lower court’s ruling that stated such works cannot be given copyrights under US law.

The case had been brought forth to the US Supreme Court by Stephen Thaler, who had filed an application to register a piece titled "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," with the Copyright Office, which was created by his AI technology "Creative Machine." The work, he claimed, "would undoubtedly qualify for copyright protection had it been made directly and solely by Dr. Thaler without any computer assistance."

His application was denied, with Thaler’s petition to the Supreme Court stating, "The Copyright Office denied Dr. Thaler’s application for copyright registration, holding that a work created by a nonhuman cannot be registered. Its primary source for its decision was its own agency Circular, which articulates a 'human-authorship requirement,' mandating that a natural person execute the traditional elements of authorship, a requirement found nowhere within the Act."

In his petition to the Supreme Court, he said that the 1976 Copyright Act "does not require a particular sort of traditional human contribution for a work to obtain copyright protection. Instead, the Act goes so far as to explicitly allow nonhuman authorship of copyrighted works." He later added, "The Act has a comprehensive design that encompasses nonhuman authorship and therefore fully incorporates AI-Generated Works. This Court need look no further than the fact that nonhuman authors such as corporations and other nonhuman 'persons' have been authors without controversy for over a century."

He accused the Copyright Office of "vastly overstepp[ing] its authority by engaging in extra-statutory policy making. Worse, it is enforcing a policy that is deeply hostile to the use of technology at a time when the United States is seeking to be a world leader in AI."

The Copyright Office’s decision had been upheld in multiple courts, including the DC District Court and the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The Office issued a memo in 2025 stating that "Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements." The appeals court wrote in its ruling, "We affirm the denial of Dr. Thaler’s copyright application. 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."