AI-Generated Works Aren’t Protected By Copyrights, Federal Judge Rules
Written by djfrosty on August 18, 2023
A federal judge ruled Friday (Aug. 18) that U.S. copyright law does not cover creative works created by artificial intelligence, weighing in on an issue that’s being closely watched by the music industry.
In a 15-page written opinion, Judge Beryl Howell upheld a decision by the U.S. Copyright Office to deny a copyright registration to computer scientist Stephen Thaler for an image created solely by an AI model. The judge cited decades of legal precedent that such protection is only afforded to works created by humans.
“The act of human creation — and how to best encourage human individuals to engage in that creation, and thereby promote science and the useful arts — was … central to American copyright from its very inception,” the judge wrote. “Non-human actors need no incentivization with the promise of exclusive rights under United States law, and copyright was therefore not designed to reach them.”
In a statement Friday, Thaler’s attorney Ryan Abbot said he and his client “disagree with the district court’s judgment” and vowed to appeal: “In our view, copyright law is clear that the public is the main beneficiary of the law and this is best achieved by promoting the generation and dissemination of new works, regardless of how they are created.”
Though novel, the decision was not entirely surprising. Federal courts have long strictly limited to content created by humans, rejecting it for works created by animals, by forces of nature, and even those claimed to have been authored by divine spirits, like religious texts.
But the ruling was nonetheless important because it came amid growing interest in the future role that could be played in the creation of music and other content by so-called generative AI tools, similar to the much-discussed ChatGPT. The question of copyright protection is crucial to the future role of AI since works that are not protected would be difficult to monetize.
“Undoubtedly, we are approaching new frontiers in copyright as artists put AI in their toolbox to be used in the generation of new visual and other artistic works,” the judge wrote. “The increased attenuation of human creativity from the actual generation of the final work will prompt challenging questions.”
The current case, however — dealing with a work that was admittedly created solely by a computer — “is not nearly so complex,” the judge wrote. Given the lack of any human input at all, she said, Thaler’s case presented a “clear and straightforward answer.”
Though Friday’s ruling came with a clear answer, more challenging legal dilemmas will come in the future from more subtle uses of AI. What if an AI-powered tool is used in the studio to create parts of a song, but human artists add other elements to the final product? How much human direction on the use of those tools is needed for the output to count as “human authorship”?
Earlier this year, a report by the U.S. Copyright Office said that AI-assisted works could still be copyrighted, so long as the ultimate author remains a human being. The report avoided offering easy answers, saying that protection for AI works would be “necessarily a case-by-case inquiry,” and that the final outcome would always depend on individual circumstances.
Read the full opinion here: