AI Is NOT an Author

So, back in March 2025, Stephen Thaler made an AI system called the Creativity Machine. This AI actually created a piece of art, and Thaler tried to register it for copyright—listing himself as the owner and the machine as the author.

But the U.S. Copyright Office wasn’t having it. According to the National Law Review, they denied the application because “a human being did not create the work.” Thaler wasn’t ready to give up though—he asked for them to reconsider twice, and both times they said nope, still no human author, still no copyright.

So he took it to court. The District Court basically said the same thing: human authorship is a core rule of copyright law. Then Thaler appealed again, this time to the DC Circuit—and they backed up the lower court. The judges said that under the Copyright Act of 1976, the term "author" clearly refers to a human being, not an AI.

Even though Thaler lost the case, this whole situation brings up a big question for the future: what does happen as AI keeps pushing into the creative world? For now, the law is super clear—only humans can be authors. But with how fast AI is evolving, this is definitely something lawmakers and courts will keep having to think about.

Read More Here:https://natlawreview.com/article/human-authorship-required-ai-isnt-author-under-copyright-act#google_vignette