US Court of Appeals Unanimously Denies Copyright Protection for AI-Created Images
A unanimous federal appeals court ruled that pictures generated solely by machines do not qualify for copyright protection.
“The Copyright Act of 1976 requires all eligible work to be authorized in the first instance by a human being,” said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The 3-0 court ruling, issued March 18, was written by Circuit Judge Patricia A. Millett, who was nominated by President Obama in 2013.
Background
Computer scientist Dr. Stephen Thaler created a generative artificial intelligence named “Creativity Machine,” which made a picture that Thaler titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.”
The U.S. Copyright Office denied Thaler’s application based on its requirement that work must be authored in the first instance by a human being. The copyright application listed Creativity Machine as the work’s sole author.
Thaler litigated. A federal court (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia) upheld the Copyright Office’s denial; the federal appeals court affirmed the ruling of the federal district court.
After the March 18 opinion from the federal appeals court, Thaler’s attorney, Ryan Abbott, said he and his client “strongly disagree” with the ruling and intend to appeal. The Copyright Office said it “believes the court reached the correct result.”
The longstanding rationale of copyright is to ensure that easily reproducible work is protected, and individuals are incentivized to create original works that otherwise would be easily plagiarized.
The Copyright Office adopted the human authorship requirement in 1973; Congress enacted the Copyright Act in 1976.
Takeaways From Federal Appeals Court Case
The Copyright Office has allowed the registration of works made by human authors who use artificial intelligence. The debate over how much AI contributed to a human author’s work was not the focus of the Thaler case because Thaler listed Creativity Machine as the sole author.
Congress is key to changing copyright, the appeals court said.
“Even if the human authorship requirement were at some point to stymie the creation of original work, that would be a policy for Congress to address,” Judge Millett wrote in the 24-page opinion.
The evolution of copyright protection has been at Congress’ direction, not the courts “giving new meaning to settled statutory terms,” the judge said.
Technology changes are constant.
“Photography, sound recordings, video recordings, and computer programs are all technologies that were once novel, but which copyright law now applies,” Judge Millett said.
Alicia Calzada, Deputy General Counsel of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), concurs.
“The DC Circuit’s well-reasoned holding is consistent with decades of copyright law and the holdings of other courts that have considered similar questions and found the same result — that to be copyrightable, an expressive work must be created by a human. That is why several years ago, a court held that a selfie taken by a monkey was not copyrightable, and it is why images created solely by AI are not copyrightable,” Calzada tells PetaPixel.
“Judge Millett explained it best that, ‘machines are tools, not authors.’ Interpretations of the Copyright Act would be nonsensical if the ‘author’ could be a computer or other machine. Machines do not have children, they do not die, they do not have nationalities or hold property. All of these concepts referenced in copyright law would have absurd results if authorship was granted to a computer program, and courts are simply not allowed to re-interpret statutes or ignore portions of a statute.”
About the author: Ken Klein lives in Silver Spring, Maryland; he is retired after a career in politics, lobbying, and media including The Associated Press and Gannett in Florida. Klein is an alumnus of Ohio University and a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council of the Scripps College of Communication. Professionally, he has worked for Fort Myers News-Press (Gannett), The Associated Press (Tallahassee), Senator Bob Graham, and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA).
Image credits: Header photo created using assets licensed via Depositphotos.
