Works generated entirely by AI cannot be copyrighted in the United States.

U.S. Copyright Office Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability 3 B. The Copyright Office’s AI Initiative In February 2022, the Copyright Office’s Review Board issued a final decision affirming the refusal to register a work claimed to be generated with no human involvement.10 A year later, the Office issued a registration for a comic book incorporating AI-generated material.11 In early 2023, the Office announced the launch of a broad AI Initiative and issued a statement of policy providing guidance on the registration of works incorporating AI-generated material (the “Guidance” or “AI Registration Guidance”).12 The Guidance reiterated the Office’s longstanding position that human authorship is an essential requirement for copyright protection in the United States.13

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Photography, sound recordings, video recordings, and computer programs are all technologies that were once novel, but which copyright law now protects. See Burrow-Giles, 111 U.S. at 58, 4 S.Ct. 279; Goldstein v. California, 412 U.S. 546, 565-566, 93 S.Ct. 2303, 37 L.Ed.2d 163 (1973); Sony, 464 U.S. at 442, 104 S.Ct. 774; Google, 593 U.S. at 21, 141 S.Ct. 1183. Importantly, that evolution in copyright protection has been at Congress's direction, not through courts giving new meaning to settled statutory terms.Contrary to Dr. Thaler's assumption, adhering to the human-authorship requirement does not impede the protection of works made with artificial intelligence. Thaler Opening Br. 38-39.First, the human authorship requirement does not prohibit copyrighting work that was made by or with the

This case presents a question made salient by recent advances in artificial intelligence: Can a non-human machine be an author under the Copyright Act of 1976? The use of artificial intelligence to produce original work is rapidly increasing across industries and creative fields. Who—or what—is the “author” of such work is a question that implicates important property rights undergirding economic growth and creative innovation.In this case, a computer scientist attributes authorship of an artwork to the operation of software. Dr. Stephen Thaler created a generative artificial intelligence named the “Creativity Machine.” The Creativity Machine made a picture that Dr. Thaler titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” Dr. Thaler submitted a copyright registration application for “A Recent Entran

the work was “[c]reated autonomously by machine,” and that his claim to the copyright was only based on the fact of his “[o]wnership of the machine.” Application at 2. The Register therefore made her decision based on the fact the application presented that plaintiff played no role in using the AI to generate the work, which plaintiff never attempted to correct. See First Request for Reconsideration at 2 (“It is correct that the present submission lacks traditional human authorship—it was autonomously generated by an AI.”); Second Request for Reconsideration at 2 (same). Plaintiff’s effort to update and modify the facts for judicial review on an APA claim is too late. On the record designed by plaintiff from the outset of his application for copyright registration, this case presen

the owner of the Creativity Machine.” Id., Ex. B, Copyright Application (“Application”) at 1, ECF No. 13-2; see also id. at 2 (listing “Author” as “Creativity Machine,” the work as “[c]reated autonomously by machine,” and the “Copyright Claimant” as “Steven [sic] Thaler” with the transfer statement, “Ownership of the machine”). The Copyright Office denied the application on the basis that the work “lack[ed] the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim,” noting that copyright law only extends to works created by human beings. Id., Ex. D, Copyright Office Refusal Letter Dated August 12, 2019 (“First Refusal Letter”) at 1, ECF No. 13-4. Plaintiff requested reconsideration of his application, confirming that the work “was autonomously generated by an AI” and “lack[ed] t

Van Lindberg, Esq. February 21, 2023 Taylor English Duma LLP -4- a “merely mechanical” process, “with no place for novelty, invention or originality” by the human photographer, then “in such case a copyright is no protection.” Id. at 59.4 In cases where non-human authorship is claimed, appellate courts have found that copyright does not protect the alleged creations. For example, the Ninth Circuit held that a book containing words “‘authored’ by non-human spiritual beings” can only gain copyright protection if there is “human selection and arrangement of the revelations.” Urantia Found. v. Kristen Maaherra, 114 F.3d 955, 957–59 (9th Cir. 1997). The Urantia court held that “some element of human creativity must have occurred in order for the Book to be copyrightable” because “it is not crea

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U.S. Copyright Office Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability 29 using Stable Diffusion was protected under China’s copyright law,147 and that the person who used AI to create the image was the author.148 According to the court, the selection of over 150 prompts combined with subsequent adjustments and modifications demonstrated that the image was the result of the author’s “intellectual achievements,” reflecting his personalized expression.149 In the European Union, the majority of member states agreed, in response to a 2024 policy questionnaire on the relationship between generative AI and copyright, that current copyright principles adequately address the copyright eligibility of AI outputs and there is no need to provide new or additional protection.150 Member s

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Search LegislationTitle: (or keywords in the title)Year:Number:Type:Changes over time for: Section 9Changes to legislation:There are currently no known outstanding effects for the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 9.Changes to LegislationRevised legislation carried on this site may not be fully up to date. At the current time any known changes or effects made by subsequent legislation have been applied to the text of the legislation you are viewing by the editorial team. Please see ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ for details regarding the timescales for which new effects are identified and recorded on this site.9 Authorship of work.U.K.(1)In this Part “”, in relation to a work, means the person who creates it. (2)That person shall be taken to be— [F1(aa)in the case of a sound