A computer program can produce an image, but that alone does not make the image eligible for copyright under the ruling in Stephen Thaler’s case. Judge Beryl Howell concluded that US copyright law requires a human creator when a work is made without human involvement.
The image at the center of the case
Thaler sought copyright registration for an image titled, “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” It was produced by a computer program he developed, called the Creativity Machine. In his application, Thaler named that software as the author and described the image as autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine.
He asked to claim the copyright himself as the owner of the program, including under a work-for-hire theory. The US Copyright Office rejected the application because it said the image lacked the human authorship necessary for copyright. The rejection came in August 2019. The office refused registration again in 2020 and 2022.
Thaler challenged the decision in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Both sides sought summary judgment, putting a focused question before the court: should a work generated entirely by an artificial system, without human involvement, qualify for copyright?
Why ownership did not answer the question
Howell denied Thaler’s motion, granted the Copyright Office’s motion and ordered that the case be closed. Her reasoning separated two issues that Thaler’s arguments had combined: whether he could own rights in an image, and whether the image qualified for copyright in the first place.
Arguments about property ownership or work-for-hire arrangements could address who might receive a valid copyright. They could not establish that a copyright existed for a work with no human author. In the judge’s view, the question of who owns a right comes after the question of whether the law recognizes that right.
The ruling also addressed the role of technology in creative work. The Copyright Act of 1976 covers original works fixed in a tangible medium, “now known or later developed,” whether made directly or with a machine or device. Howell accepted that copyright law can accommodate new tools and forms of expression, but said that flexibility has historically operated alongside human creativity.
The human author requirement
Howell traced the human authorship requirement through the history of US copyright law. The Copyright Act of 1909 referred to a “person” securing copyright for “his work,” and the ruling said the 1976 law carried forward the earlier understanding. The opinion also pointed to the Supreme Court’s treatment of photography: copyright in a photograph rested on the human creator’s conception and design, with the camera serving as a tool.
The judge cited a 9th Circuit appeals court ruling in 2018 involving a monkey that took a selfie. The court had found that animals lacked statutory standing under the Copyright Act. Howell said Thaler could not identify a case recognizing copyright in a work originating with a non-human creator.
The decision reflects the way copyright has been understood in this case: a machine may help produce a work, but a machine’s output alone does not supply the human authorship the court found necessary. Thaler’s claim that owning the Creativity Machine entitled him to the image’s copyright could not overcome that threshold.
Questions for works made with AI assistance
Howell said future disputes may require closer examination. Courts may need to decide how much human input makes someone using an AI system an author, and how to assess the originality of AI-generated work when a system may have been trained on unknown pre-existing works.
Those questions were not resolved by Thaler’s case, which the judge considered more straightforward. In court, Thaler said he had provided instructions and directed the AI, and that the system operated under his control. But his original application had described the work as created autonomously by a machine and based his claim on ownership of the machine. Howell said it was too late to change those facts during judicial review.
The ruling therefore draws a line around the claim that was actually presented: an image described in the application as entirely machine-made, with no human involvement in its creation. It does not settle how copyright applies to every work made with AI tools. Instead, it leaves future cases to examine the nature and extent of a person’s creative contribution.