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Update:
- An artificial intelligence researcher is appealing a D.C. federal judge’s decision that the U.S. Copyright Office was correct to turn down a copyright application the researcher filed for a computer-generated image.
- The researcher argued he should be allowed copyright protection for images he creates using his AI system, claiming he owns the images because he owns the AI system that created them.
- The judge ruled only people can have copyright protection and the Copyright Office was allowed to reject his copyright application since the image in question “lacked human authorship.”
- The researcher is appealing the case to the D.C. circuit.
AI art lawsuit overview:
- Who: A federal judge sided against Stephen Thaler in his lawsuit targeting Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the United States Copyright Office.
- Why: The judge ruled the Copyright Office was allowed to reject a copyright application for an image that was computer generated.
- Where: The lawsuit was filed in a federal court in the District of Columbia.
(Aug. 25, 2023)
A federal judge in the District of Columbia has sided against an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher who argued the U.S. Copyright Office should not have rejected his copyright application for an image that was computer generated.
Plaintiff Stephen Thaler had challenged a decision to reject a copyright application he had filed in an effort to register a two-dimensional artwork piece called “A Recent Entrance to Paradise” that was created using his AI system.
Thaler argued images created using his AI system — dubbed the Creativity Machine — should be eligible for copyright protections since he owns the image because he owns the AI system that created it.
The judge, in granting a summary judgment to the federal government, ruled the Copyright Office was allowed to reject the copyright application on the grounds the work “lacked human authorship.”
“Copyright has never stretched so far, however, as to protect works generated by new forms of technology operating absent any guiding human hand, as plaintiff urges here,” the judge said, in a memorandum opinion.
Copyright Office claims Copyright Act does not protect creators of computer-generated works
The Copyright Office had argued the Copyright Act did not have protections built in for creators of computer-generated works, and maintained that its decision to reject Thaler’s application for copyright was based on the law’s language.
The judge, while siding with the government, called human authorship “a bedrock requirement of copyright” and determined that the principle “follows from the plain text of the Copyright Act.”
The Copyright Office had also maintained that it rejected Thaler’s copyright application due to Supreme Court precedent and federal court decisions to deny extending copyright protections for works without human authorship.
In another case involving AI art, a federal judge in San Francisco said last month he was inclined to dismiss nearly all of a class action lawsuit against a trio of AI-art companies accused of using art without permission to train their AI-art generators.
Do you believe creators of AI art should be allowed to get copyright protections for their work? Let us know in the comments.
The plaintiff is represented by Geoffrey A. Neri, Timothy Lamoureux and Ryan Abbott of Brown Neri Smith & Khan LLP.
The AI images lawsuit is Thaler v. Perlmutter, et al., Case No. 1:22-cv-01564, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
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