US appeals court rejects copyrights for AI-generated art lacking 'human' creator (1 Viewer)

[Cpvr]

March 18 - A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday affirmed that a work of art generated by artificial intelligence without human input cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed, opens new tab with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler's AI system "DABUS" was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted.
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Tuesday's decision marks the latest attempt by U.S. officials to grapple with the copyright implications of the fast-growing generative AI industry. The Copyright Office has separately rejected artists' bids for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney.
The artists argued they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance -- unlike Thaler, who said that his "sentient" system created the image in his case independently.
Thaler's attorney Ryan Abbott said he and his client "strongly disagree" with the ruling and intend to appeal. The Copyright Office said in a statement that it "believes the court reached the correct result."

Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a copyright in 2018 covering "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," a piece of visual art he said was made by his AI system. The office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be copyrightable.
A federal district court judge in Washington upheld the decision in 2023 and said human authorship is a "bedrock requirement of copyright" based on "centuries of settled understanding." Thaler told the D.C. Circuit that the ruling threatened to "discourage investment and labor in a critically new and important developing field."

U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel on Tuesday that U.S. copyright law "requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being."
"Because many of the Copyright Act's provisions make sense only if an author is a human being, the best reading of the Copyright Act is that human authorship is required for registration," the appeals court said.

source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us...nerated-art-lacking-human-creator-2025-03-18/

 

[Ravenfreak]

Good I don't think AI generated art should be allowed to have any copyrights. It's art generated by a machine of course, only a human needs to input text into a prompt and tell the computer to generate it.

 

[CTS]

This opens up a stinky can of worms.

Art ai created- cant be copyrighted
Text ai created- copyright able
Software ai created- copyright able
Hardware ai created- patent able

They can't have it both ways. Either we have copyrights or we don't.

 

[Ravenfreak]

This opens up a stinky can of worms.

Art ai created- cant be copyrighted
Text ai created- copyright able
Software ai created- copyright able
Hardware ai created- patent able

They can't have it both ways. Either we have copyrights or we don't.

Hmm I didn't know about this. That doesn't make any sense, why disapprove copyright for AI created art but then allow it for other AI created things? Surely sometime down the road they will remove copyright approval on all AI created things.

 

[CTS]

@Ravenfreak Think about it this way...

1 - AI creates art, its a man-made machine designed to follow our requests to produce an image based on our inputs.

2 - A camera is a man-made machine that follows our request to reproduce as an image something you are looking at.

Tell me what the difference is. I can copyright a digital image. Even one I may have altered. The difference to me is just in the way the human interfaces and instructs the machine to produce something from my inputs.

I feel if you pick up a mechanical pencil, you are using a machine to convey your thoughts.

The art should be copyright protected. I would appeal that decision.

 

[Cpvr]

BREAKING: The U.S. Copyright Office SIDES WITH CONTENT CREATORS, concluding in its latest report that the fair use exception likely does not apply to commercial AI training. From the report's conclusion:

"Various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative. The extent to which they are fair, however, will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs—all of which can affect the market. When a model is deployed for purposes such as analysis or research—the types of uses that are critical to international competitiveness—the outputs are unlikely to substitute for expressive works used in training. But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries.

For those uses that may not qualify as fair, practical solutions are critical to support ongoing innovation. Licensing agreements for AI training, both individual and collective, are fast emerging in certain sectors, although their availability so far is inconsistent. Given the robust growth of voluntary licensing, as well as the lack of stakeholder support for any statutory change, the Office believes government intervention would be premature at this time. Rather, licensing markets should continue to develop, extending early successes into more contexts as soon as possible. In those areas where remaining gaps are unlikely to be filled, alternative approaches such as extended collective licensing should be considered to address any market failure.

In our view, American leadership in the AI space would best be furthered by supporting both of these world-class industries that contribute so much to our economic and cultural advancement. Effective licensing options can ensure that innovation continues to advance without undermining intellectual property rights. These groundbreaking technologies should benefit both the innovators who design them and the creators whose content fuels them, as well as the general public."

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My comments:

Although this is a pre-publication version, the report states: "The Office is releasing this pre-publication version of Part 3 in response to congressional inquiries and expressions of interest from stakeholders. A final version will be published in the near future, without any substantive changes expected in the analysis or conclusions."

It's GREAT NEWS for content creators/copyright holders, especially as the U.S. Copyright Office's opinion will likely influence present and future AI copyright lawsuits in the U.S.

As I've written before, licensing deals seem to be the future of AI training.

https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-3-Generative-AI-Training-Report-Pre-Publication-Version.pdf