According to US law, a US court in Washington DC ruled that a work of art made by Artificial Intelligence without human intervention cannot be copyrighted. The works done by human authors are eligible to receive copyrights, said US District Judge Beryl Howell while asserting the Copyright Office’s rejection of an application filed by the computer scientist Stephen Thaler on behalf of his DABUS system.

The decision followed losses for Thaler on bids for the US patents covering inventions he mentioned were made by DABUS (Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience). Thaler applied for DABUS-generated patents in various countries, such as the UK, South Africa, Australia and Saudi Arabia, with limited success.

Ryan Abbott, an attorney of Thaler, opined that he and his client oppose the decision and will appeal again. The Copyright Office, in a statement, mentioned that it believes the court has arrived at the correct result.

The rapidly evolving field of generative AI has triggered new intellectual property concerns. The Copyright Office has also rejected the bid of an artist for copyrights on the images generated by Midjourney, regardless of the artist’s argument that the AI system was an addition to their creative process.

Various pending lawsuits were also filed on using copyrighted works to train generative AI without permission. Howell wrote for copyright law, which read, “We are approaching new frontiers in copyright as artists put AI in their toolbox,” which will raise “challenging questions”. He further added that the case is not that much complex.

Thaler applied for a copyright covering in 2018, “A recent Entrance to Paradise”, which was a piece of visual art he said was generated by his AI system without any human intervention. However, the office rejected the application last year and declared creative works require human authors to be copyrightable.

Thaler later challenged the decision in the federal court by arguing that the authorship of humans is not a concrete legal requirement and allowed AI copyrights to agree with the copyright’s purpose as outlined in the US constitution to promote the evolution of science and useful arts.

However, Howell has agreed with the Copyright Office and claimed that human authorship is the “bedrock requirement of copyright” as per the settled understanding for centuries.