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Supreme Court Declines to Weigh In on Copyright Protection for AI-Generated Art

By  |  March 2, 2026
Supreme Court Declines to Weigh In on Copyright Protection for AI-Generated Art

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider whether artwork created entirely by artificial intelligence qualifies for copyright protection under federal law, leaving intact lower court rulings that denied such protection to a Missouri computer scientist.

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    The case centered on Stephen Thaler of St. Charles, Missouri, who sought copyright registration for a visual artwork titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” Thaler said the image was autonomously generated by his artificial intelligence system known as DABUS. According to Reuters, the artwork depicts train tracks leading into a portal, framed by imagery resembling green and purple foliage.

    Thaler applied for federal copyright registration in 2018. However, the U.S. Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, concluding that copyright law requires a human author for a creative work to be eligible for protection. According to Reuters, the office determined that works produced without human involvement fall outside the scope of the statute.

    After the rejection, Thaler challenged the decision in federal court. A judge in Washington in 2023 upheld the Copyright Office’s determination, stating that human authorship is a “bedrock requirement of copyright.” According to Reuters, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed that ruling in 2025, reinforcing the principle that authorship under U.S. copyright law refers to human creators.

    Related: When AI Gets It Wrong: Lessons from Mazaheri v Law Society of Ontario

    The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the appeal leaves those rulings in place. According to Reuters, President Donald Trump’s administration had urged the justices to decline the case. In court filings, the administration argued, “Although the Copyright Act does not define the term ‘author,’ multiple provisions of the act make clear that the term refers to a human rather than a machine.”

    Thaler’s legal team had urged the justices to take up the matter, calling it of “paramount importance” in light of the rapid expansion of generative AI technologies. Following the court’s refusal, his lawyers warned, “even if it later overturns the Copyright Office’s test in another case, it will be too late. The Copyright Office will have irreversibly and negatively impacted AI development and use in the creative industry during critically important years,” according to Reuters.

    The dispute highlights broader tensions surrounding artificial intelligence and intellectual property law. According to Reuters, the Copyright Office has also denied copyright claims from artists seeking protection for images generated using the AI platform Midjourney. Those artists argued that their works, created with AI assistance, should qualify for protection because of their human involvement — a distinction from Thaler’s claim that DABUS independently produced his artwork.

    The Supreme Court has previously declined to hear another appeal brought by Thaler involving whether AI-generated inventions can receive patent protection. In that separate matter, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected his applications for a beverage holder and a light beacon that he said were devised by his AI system, citing similar reasoning about the requirement of human inventorship, according to Reuters.

    Source: Reuters