Supreme Court: AI-Generated Art Can't Be Copyrighted

The U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a significant blow to the notion of AI ownership, declining to hear a case on whether AI-generated artwork can receive copyright protection. By refusing the appeal, the Court lets stand a lower court ruling that such works cannot be copyrighted because they lack human authorship. The case was brought by computer scientist Stephen Thaler, who sought to copyright an image created by his AI system, the Creativity Machine. U.S. Copyright Office and lower courts consistently rejected his application, maintaining that copyright law is designed to protect 'the fruits of intellectual labor' that are 'founded in the creative powers of the human mind.' This decision reinforces the current legal standard that copyright requires a human author. It has immediate implications for artists, developers, and companies using generative AI tools, clarifying that purely machine-generated outputs likely fall into the public domain. The ruling leaves open questions abou