A federal appeals court delivered a decisive blow to artificial intelligence copyright claims in March 2025, ruling that machines cannot be recognized as authors under United States copyright law. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed in Thaler v. Perlmutter that human authorship remains a fundamental requirement for copyright protection, while leaving crucial questions unanswered about the growing field of AI-assisted creative works.

What Happened in Thaler v Perlmutter Case

Computer scientist Dr. Stephen Thaler attempted to push the boundaries of intellectual property law by seeking copyright registration for artwork created entirely by his artificial intelligence system. Thaler created a generative artificial intelligence named the “Creativity Machine,” which then created the picture on its own. On a copyright registration application, Thaler listed the Creativity Machine as the work’s sole author, and Thaler as the work’s owner.

The artwork, titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” represented a test case for whether AI systems could claim authorship rights independent of human creators. Dr. Thaler submitted a copyright registration application to the United States Copyright Office, listing the Creativity Machine as the sole author and himself as the copyright claimant. This direct challenge to established copyright doctrine set the stage for a legal battle that would clarify fundamental questions about creativity and authorship in the age of artificial intelligence.

The U.S. Copyright Office rejected Thaler’s application, maintaining its longstanding position that copyrightable works must originate from human authors. This denial prompted Thaler to pursue federal court review, arguing that the human authorship requirement was both unconstitutional and unsupported by statutory text.

DC Circuit Rejects AI Copyright Claims

On Tuesday, March 18, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a highly anticipated opinion in the Thaler v. Perlmutter appeal, rejecting the petitioner’s attempt to obtain a copyright registration for artwork generated by artificial intelligence. In a unanimous opinion, the D.C. Circuit held that the Copyright Act of 1976 requires authorship by a human for a work to be registrable.

Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the unanimous three-judge panel, grounded the decision in careful statutory analysis rather than broad policy pronouncements. The court emphasized that the Copyright Act of 1976 requires all works to be authored by a human being. While the court acknowledged that the Copyright Act does not define the term “author,” multiple provisions within the act, and the act “taken as a whole,” make clear that authors must be humans, not machines.

The court identified specific textual evidence supporting human authorship requirements throughout the Copyright Act. Those include that copyright terms are based on human lifespans, that the act discusses machines as something distinct from authors, and that authors are discussed as having a nationality and domicile, the ability to own property and provide signatures, surviving family members when they die, and intentions. These provisions collectively demonstrate that Congress assumed authors would possess uniquely human characteristics when drafting copyright legislation.

Why Thaler Lost His AI Copyright Appeal

Dr. Thaler advanced several arguments attempting to establish AI authorship under existing copyright law, each of which the court systematically rejected. Dr. Thaler argued that the natural meaning of “author” is not confined to human beings, citing a dictionary definition. However, the court rejected this argument, stating that statutory construction requires interpreting words in their statutory context, and not relying on one-off dictionary definitions.

The work-for-hire doctrine provided another avenue for Thaler’s legal challenge, but the court found this argument equally unpersuasive. Dr. Thaler also contended that the work-made-for-hire provision allows nonhuman entities to be considered authors. The court also rejected this argument, noting that the text of the work-for-hire provision states that the party who hired the creator is merely “considered” the author, an implicit acknowledgment that the hiring entity is not actually an “author”.

Thaler’s policy arguments about incentivizing innovation also failed to persuade the court. Finally, Dr. Thaler argued that the United States Copyright Office’s human authorship requirement would disincentivize creativity by creators and operators of AI. The court dismissed this concern, noting that the requirement still incentivizes humans to create and pursue exclusive rights to works made with the assistance of AI.

US Copyright Office Position on AI Authorship

The court’s decision aligns with recent guidance from the U.S. Copyright Office, which has been actively examining AI’s impact on copyright law through comprehensive studies and public consultations. In January 2025, the Copyright Office issued a special report, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, that reviewed the legal history of similar questions. “No court has recognized copyright in material created by non-humans, and those that have spoken on this issue have rejected the possibility,” the report concluded.

The Copyright Office’s position draws support from broader legal precedent beyond the AI context. It also cited a recent precedent in Naruto v. Slater, a Ninth Circuit appeals court decision from 2018. In the Naruto decision, the appeals court determined that Naruto, a Crested Macaque monkey represented by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), could not claim copyright infringement of selfie photographs he took using a camera.

The court’s decision in Thaler v. Perlmutter aligns with the findings and recommendations of the U.S. Copyright Office’s January 2025 report on copyright and artificial intelligence. That report reaffirmed the necessity of human authorship for copyright protection, emphasizing that while AI can assist in the creative process, the final work must reflect human creative input to be eligible for copyright.

Jason Allen AI Art Case Still Pending

While Thaler v. Perlmutter addressed works created entirely by AI, a parallel case examines the more complex question of AI-assisted human creativity. In Allen v. Perlmutter, a content creator was denied a copyright for AI-generated art. The artist, Jason Allen, claims he was more involved with the process of using AI as a tool because he used “extremely detailed descriptions and went through several iterations before he considered the work finished”.

Jason Allen’s case presents fundamentally different facts from Thaler’s AI-only approach. To create Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, Allen says that he “selected the colors, the style, and the era of the artwork, and arranged the elements in the image,” and then used repeated text prompts to direct Midjourney to create an image with his exact specifications. Allen emphasizes the extensive human effort involved in his creative process, claiming he refined his work through 624 different prompts to achieve his artistic vision.

Allen believed the Thaler case does not apply to his claim. “The absence of substantial human involvement justified the denial of copyright protection in Thaler,” he argued in a filing last September. In his case, Allen argued that “significant creative control and artistic input throughout the iterative process clearly distinguish his request for copyright protection from those situations where copyright registration should rightly be denied”.

The Allen case, assigned to Magistrate Judge Kathryn Starnella, after a referral from Judge Kato Crews for nondispositive matters, remains pending in Colorado federal court and may provide crucial guidance on the boundaries between copyrightable AI-assisted works and unprotectable AI-generated content.

AI Art Copyright Rules for Artists

The Thaler decision establishes clear parameters for purely AI-generated content while highlighting the complex questions surrounding AI-assisted creativity. The Thaler decision establishes just a first stake in copyright law regarding the emerging intersection of AI and intellectual property rights. It definitively, but perhaps unsurprisingly, holds that a work created solely by AI is not entitled to copyright protection.

However, the ruling deliberately leaves unresolved the more challenging questions that creative professionals face daily. However, the court did not hold that copyright protection was inherently prohibited for works where AI played an assistive role. Rather, the copyrightability of such works would depend on a line-drawing exercise between the respective roles of AI and humans in the generation of creative works.

The Copyright Office has attempted to provide some guidance for this gray area through its examination of specific cases. For the graphic novel Zarya of the Dawn, the Copyright Office concluded that a graphic novel comprising human-authored text combined with images generated by Midjourney constituted a copyrightable work, but that the individual images themselves could not be protected by copyright. This example illustrates the fact-specific analysis required for works combining human and AI contributions.

Unanswered Questions About AI Copyright Law

While the D.C. Circuit provided definitive answers on AI authorship, several constitutional and policy questions remain unresolved for future litigation. Millett ruled only on Thaler’s application as not conforming to the law, and not on broader constitutional issues raised the Copyright Office and Thaler in court briefs. This narrow approach leaves open potential constitutional challenges to copyright law’s human authorship requirement.

The opinion reasons that “[a]ll of these statutory provisions collectively identify an ‘author’ as a human being,” since machines do not have those attributes, so the best reading of the Copyright Act is that “humanity [is] a necessary condition of authorship”. This statutory interpretation approach avoids broader constitutional questions about whether the Constitution itself mandates human authorship for copyright protection.

The court’s focus on statutory construction rather than constitutional interpretation may invite future challenges arguing that technological advancement requires reinterpreting copyright’s foundational assumptions. Counsel for Thaler has indicated that his client is likely to seek Supreme Court review of the D.C. Circuit’s opinion, but it may be unlikely that the Supreme Court will grant certiorari since it declined to review the Federal Circuit’s decision in Thaler v. Vidal.

How to Protect AI-Assisted Creative Works

The creative industries now face the challenge of navigating copyright law in an environment where AI assistance is increasingly common while pure AI generation remains unprotectable. A wide swath of middle ground remains for works that involve some level of human/machine cooperation in the creative process; harder questions remain as to what level of human influence might be necessary to qualify for copyright protection.

Artists, writers, musicians, and other creators must now consider how their use of AI tools affects the copyrightability of their work. The degree of human creative input, the nature of AI assistance, and the final creative product will all influence whether works qualify for copyright protection under the emerging legal framework.

The technology industry also faces uncertainty as AI capabilities continue advancing. Companies developing AI tools must consider how their systems’ operation affects users’ copyright claims, while businesses using AI for content creation must evaluate the intellectual property implications of their workflows.

How Will AI Copyright Laws Impact Businesses?

The Thaler decision provides several practical takeaways for creators and businesses working with AI technologies. First, works created entirely by AI systems without human creative input cannot receive copyright protection under current U.S. law. This means AI-generated content enters the public domain immediately upon creation, allowing unlimited use by anyone.

Second, AI-assisted works may qualify for copyright protection depending on the nature and extent of human creative contribution. Creators should document their creative processes, maintain records of their artistic decisions, and ensure meaningful human involvement in developing their works. The Allen case will likely provide additional guidance on where courts draw the line between protectable AI-assisted creativity and unprotectable AI generation.

Third, businesses should review their AI usage policies and content creation workflows to understand the copyright implications of their practices. Companies relying on AI-generated content for marketing, product development, or other commercial purposes should consider the competitive risks of using unprotectable material that competitors can freely appropriate.

Key Takeaways

FAQs

Can AI-Assisted Artwork Still Receive Copyright Protection?

Yes, potentially. The Thaler ruling only addressed works where AI was listed as the sole author. AI-assisted works with sufficient human creative input may still qualify for copyright protection, but the exact requirements remain unclear. The ongoing Allen v. Perlmutter case may provide more guidance on this question.

What Happens to AI-Generated Content Without Copyright?

AI-generated content that lacks human authorship enters the public domain immediately upon creation. This means anyone can use, modify, reproduce, or distribute such content without permission or payment. Businesses should consider this when using AI-generated materials for commercial purposes since competitors can freely copy the same content.

How Should Creators Document AI-Assisted Work for Copyright?

Creators should maintain detailed records of their creative processes, including initial concepts, artistic decisions, iterative refinements, and final selections. Documentation should demonstrate meaningful human creative input beyond simple prompting. The extent of required documentation will likely be clarified through future court decisions and Copyright Office guidance.

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