U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Upholds Human Authorship Requirement in AI-Generated Works

In an important (but perhaps not surprising) decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the U.S. Copyright Office’s denial of copyright registration for a work generated solely by AI. The court asked the question: “Can a non-human machine be an author under the Copyright Act of 1976?” Finding that registration would not satisfy the requirement that all registered works must be created by a human being in the first instance, the court found that the Copyright Office’s denial of copyright registration was proper.

In Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039, 1041 (D.C. Cir. 2025), Dr. Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist, developed an AI system known as the "Creativity Machine," which autonomously generated an artwork titled "A Recent Entrance to Paradise." Thaler sought to register the artwork with the U.S. Copyright Office, listing the AI as the sole author. The Copyright Office denied the application, citing the lack of human authorship. Thaler challenged this decision, arguing that the AI's creation should be eligible for copyright protection and that he, as the AI's creator, should hold the rights.

The “AIrtist’s” work

In upholding the lower court’s decision, the Court of Appeals emphasized that the Copyright Act requires human authorship. The court noted that many provisions of the Act, such as the duration of copyright tied to the author’s life and the transfer of rights upon death, presuppose a human creator.

The court held: “The Copyright Act of 1976 requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being."

Furthermore, the court rejected Thaler’s argument that he should be considered the author under the work-made-for-hire doctrine. The court held that the requirement for human authorship applies to all copyrightable work, including work-made-for-hire. As stated by the district court, a work-for-hire requires that the work first requires “an interest to be claimed” before, for example, one can claim a work as a work-for-hie. In Thaler’s case, the AI-generated image was never eligible for copyright, and therefore there was no copyright to transfer.

Prior to this decision, various arguments had been made for why AI-generated art should be copyrightable. After all, artists in various media currently use a wide array of technology to assist in the generation of art: Photoshop, computer animation, CGI, motion capture, autotune, etc. However, the court’s decision draws the line at works, such as “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” which were generated in the first instance by Artificial Intelligence. The intersection of human creators and computer assistance may require refinement of case law in the future.

Furthermore, Thaler waived an argument that the work is copyrightable because he was the author who used AI to generate the work in the first place. Because the court did not address this issue, it may find its way to the higher courts in cases in which a human being prompts and/or uses AI to create works of art.