The advancement of AI-generated art suffered a crucial blow this week when the Supreme Court left in place a lower-court ruling that such works cannot be protected under U.S. copyright law.
The original plaintiff, a computer scientist from Missouri named Stephen Thaler, appealed to the Supreme Court after “lower courts upheld a U.S. Copyright Office decision that the AI-crafted visual art at issue in the case was ineligible for copyright protection because it did not have a human creator,” per Reuters.
Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a federal copyright registration in 2018 covering “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” visual art he said his AI technology “DABUS” created. The image shows train tracks entering a portal, surrounded by what appears to be green and purple plant imagery.
The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be eligible to receive a copyright.