(Credit: Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images)
AI-generated images are all over the internet, but it won't be possible to copyright them for the time being. As Reuters reports, the US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case on whether AI art can be copyrighted, upholding a lower court's decision to reject the idea.
The case was filed by Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist from Missouri, who requested copyright registration for an image generated by his own AI technology, called DABUS, in 2018. The image, titled "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," shows a railway track surrounded by lush greenery. Thaler identified his "Creativity Machine" as the author and sought a copyright claim as the owner of the machine.
His application was denied by the US Copyright Office in 2019 and again in 2022, citing the requirement that copyrighted material must have human inventors. A federal judge in Washington upheld that decision in 2023, and the US Court of Appeals did the same in 2025.
In the meantime, Thaler tried getting DABUS' creations copyrighted by the UK Supreme Court and in the EU. Both rejected his request. Notably, the US Supreme Court had refused to hear Thaler's case on some other materials generated by his AI in 2023.
This time around, even the Trump administration didn't want the Supreme Court to entertain the case, Reuters reports.
Unsurprisingly, Thaler's lawyers are upset with the outcome and said that even if the Supreme Court overturns the decision in the future, it would be too late. "The Copyright Office will have irreversibly and negatively impacted AI development and use in the creative industry during critically important years," the lawyers told Reuters.
Meanwhile, late last year, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) declared that, "Artificial intelligence systems, regardless of their sophistication, cannot be named as inventors or joint inventors on a patent application, as they are not natural persons."