US Copyright Office refuses to register AI-generated work, finding that "human authorship is a prerequisite to copyright protection"
Can a work entirely created by a machine be protected by copyright? On Valentine’s Day, the US Copyright Office (Review Board) answered this question with a heartbreaking ‘no’, holding that “copyright law only protects “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the [human] mind”” and consequently refusing to register the two-dimensional artwork 'A Recent Entrance to Paradise' below (the ‘Work’): Creativity Machine's A Recent Entrance to Paradise Background In 2018, Stephen Thaler (if the name rings an AI inventor-bell then you’re hearing it right) applied to register a copyright claim in the Work, indicating “Creativity Machine” as the author and Thaler as the owner of such machine. The application stated that the Work had been autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine. Registration was sought as a work-for-hire to the owner of the Creativity Machine. In 2019, the Copyright Office rejected the application, hold