The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s decision in Thaler v. Perlmutter, issued on March 18, 2025, affirms on a baseline issue for copyright law in the era of artificial intelligence. The case centers around Stephen Thaler, who sought copyright protection for an image generated by his AI system, the “Creativity Machine.”  The system autonomously generated an image titled A Recent Entrance to Paradise without direct human input.  The case arose from the copyright application filed by Thaler in 2019 for “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.”  Instead of listing himself as author of the work, Thaler identified the author as “Creativity Machine”.  He based his claim of ownership on the work-for-hire doctrine, on the theory that he owned the Creativity Machine, so the AI software was essentially the same as an employee who creates works in the course and scope of their employment.  The appellate court affirmed the earlier decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which had denied copyright protection for an image generated solely by an AI system. The court addressed Thaler’s argument regarding the work-made-for-hire doctrine, stating that this provision presupposes an existing interest to be claimed, which was not applicable in this case since the AI-generated work was never eligible for copyright protection.

In this regard, the appellate court concurred with the lower court’s assessment that the Copyright Act requires human authorship for a work to be eligible for copyright protection. The appellate court stated:

“As a matter of statutory law, the Copyright Act requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being.”

The district court, in its earlier ruling, stated that “Copyright has never stretched so far, however, as to protect works generated by new forms of technology operating absent any guiding human hand….”

And further that:

“Plaintiff can point to no case in which a court has recognized copyright in a work originating with a non-human.”

The decision in Thaler reinforces the longstanding principle that copyright law protects only works created by humans. It affirms the ruling that AI-generated works, without significant human input, cannot receive copyright protection.

The DC Circuit court noted, however, that the human-authorship requirement does not prohibit the protection of works created by human authors using artificial intelligence.  The Appeals Court pointed out that the Copyright Office has allowed the registration of works made by human authors who use artificial intelligence. See Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence, 88 Fed. Reg. 16,190, 16,192 (March 16, 2023) (Whether a work made with artificial intelligence is registerable depends ‘on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work.’) Accordingly, the Copyright Office’s guidance and policy report on the registration of works incorporating AI-generated material are key resources for understanding how to navigate the issues involved. Under the Copyright Office’s guidance, applicants have a duty to disclose the inclusion of AI-generated content in a work submitted for registration and to provide a brief explanation of the human author’s contributions to the work, and the agency will evaluate whether sufficient human authorship exists on a case-by-case basis. See 88 Fed. Reg. 16,190, 16,193 (March 16, 2023).