WASHINGTON D. C. (CelebrityAccess) — A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., has upheld a ruling that artistic works generated by artificial intelligence systems without direct human input are not eligible for copyright protection under U.S. law.
In a unanimous decision, U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett, writing on behalf of a three-judge appeals panel, stated that U.S. copyright law “requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being.”
The ruling follows a bid by artist and computer scientist Stephen Thaler, who in 2018 applied for a copyright for A Recent Entrance to Paradise, a piece of visual art generated by his “DABUS” AI system.
In January, the U.S. Copyright Office affirmed that the image was not eligible for copyright protection, emphasizing that only works with significant human contributions could be granted copyrights.
“After considering the extensive public comments and the current state of technological development, our conclusions turn on the centrality of human creativity to copyright,” Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office, wrote in January. “Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection. Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine, however, would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright.”
