On 18 August 2023, a US district court in Washington, DC held that AI-generated work without human input cannot be copyrighted in the US. Specifically, the court held that copyrightable work requires human authorship. The court’s judgment aligns with the US Copyright Office’s (“USCO”) policy statement which also provides that copyright registration requires human authorship. The USCO also denied the copyright registration of images generated by the AI image generator Midjourney earlier this year.

The court made its decision with respect to the visual art piece titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” The “Creativity Machine,” a computer program, created the piece of its own accord.

The owner of the “Creativity Machine” is Dr. Stephen Thaler. Dr. Thaler is also known for his lawsuits aimed at allowing AI to be named as an inventor of a patent. Dr. Thaler has succeeded in some jurisdictions, for example South Africa and Australia, and lost in other jurisdictions, for example the US, the UK, and New Zealand.

See here for the full court judgment.

See here, here, and here for more developments in AI being named as an inventor of a patent.