Copyright dispute over AI-generated art: US Supreme Court dismisses case

Computer scientist Stephen Thaler has once again failed before the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of the USA refused on Monday to address the question of whether art created by artificial intelligence (AI) can be protected by copyright under US law and dismissed a lawsuit by Thaler. The case has been dealt with by various courts over several years.

Thaler, founder of Imagination Engines Inc, a company for advanced artificial neural network technology based in the US state of Missouri, had applied for copyright for the work “A Recent Entrance to Paradise” in 2018, which was created by his Dabus technology. The image shows tracks leading into a portal, surrounded by green and purple plant motifs. Dabus stands for Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience; Thaler describes the system as a combination of several neural systems that – like the human brain – can generate new ideas through changed connections of machine synapses. The image was created “autonomously by a computer algorithm”, he himself owns the machine, sees himself as its client, and wants to register the rights to the computer-generated image as commissioned work for himself, according to Thaler's reasoning at the time.

The US Copyright Office rejected his application in August 2019. Thaler then turned to the responsible appeals body, the Copyright Review Board (CRB). He described the previous rejection as unconstitutional; it was not substantiated by case law. However, the CRB maintained its decision and confirmed the rejection in March 2020. Two months later, Thaler asked the same authority for a renewed review. But it stuck to its decision. Creative works must have human authors to be protected by copyright in the United States, according to the ruling. A federal judge in Washington confirmed the decision of the Copyright Office in 2023, calling human authorship a “fundamental requirement of copyright.” The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the ruling last year. Thaler appealed this to the Supreme Court.

A case of “highest importance”

While the administration of US President Donald Trump urged the Supreme Court not to accept Thaler's appeal, according to a report by the news agency Reuters, his lawyers stated that the case was of “highest importance” given the rapid rise of generative AI.

Accordingly, they expressed disappointment with the court's decision to reject the appeal. “Even if it [the Supreme Court] overturns the Copyright Office's criteria later in another case, it will be too late. The Copyright Office will have irreversibly and negatively influenced the development and use of AI in the creative economy during crucial years,” Reuters quotes from a statement by the lawyers.

Already in another case about three years ago, the US Supreme Court rejected a request by Thaler for a hearing. At that time, it concerned the refusal of the US Patent and Trademark Office to grant patents for inventions by Thaler's Dabus system. Dabus had developed unique prototypes for a cup holder and an emergency light completely independently. Similar to the current case concerning art created by AI, lower courts argued that patents can only be granted to human inventors.

(akn)