Supreme Court blocks another bid to copyright AI art

It’s rare for the Supreme Court to do anything for society’s benefit these days. Whether they’re willing to effectively legalize racial profiling or block a law that prevents schools from outing transgender students to their parents, the modern Supreme Court often puts marginalized people in difficult and potentially dangerous positions. But, for once, by refusing to do anything, they’ve struck a win for artists. Artnet reports that on March 2, the Supreme Court declined to review a case over whether so-called AI artwork can be copyrighted, reaffirming the requirement for human authorship in copyright law. The Supreme Court should consider doing nothing more often.

The case concerns computer scientist Stephen Thaler, who has sought to copyright his AI-generated artwork, A Recent Entrance To Paradise, since 2012. In 2022, the U.S. Copyright Office ruled that “human authorship” is a requirement for copyright, and considering the universe of copyright violations related to AI, it’s probably for the best. The decision was upheld by the U.S. District Court in 2023 and by the Court of Appeals in 2024, but Thaler is determined to copyright his AI artwork generated by his AI system, DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience), over a decade ago. Surprisingly, the AI-friendly Trump administration urged the Supreme Court not to hear his appeal.

Thaler, who clearly has a lot of time and money on his hands, received similar decisions in 2019, 2020, and 2022. In 2023, the Supreme Court rejected his lawsuit over whether AI-generated inventions for a beverage holder and an emergency light beacon, which Thaler claims were developed autonomously, could be patented. However, because AI prompting doesn’t give the end-user sufficient control over the finished product, the patent office cannot treat a human as the author, a necessity for a copyright claim. Lower courts argued that patents could be issued only to human inventors, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision. Back to the drawing board, DABUS.

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Supreme Court blocks another bid to copyright AI art

Art made by generative AI won't have its day in the Supreme Court just yet.