Artist Sues Copyright Office Over its Refusal to Register His AI-Enhanced Photo

After having his registration request rejected by the U.S. Copyright Office, the author of an image that combined a photograph with Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night is suing.

PetaPixel reported back in December 2023 that the Copyright Office had rejected Ankit Sahni’s bid to have his artwork officially registered. Now, a report by Copyright Lately reveals that Sahni, via his company Suryast U.S. Enterprises LLC, has filed a lawsuit in the Central District of California challenging the Office’s decision.

Sahni calls his creation “Suryast.” It combines a sunset photo that he took himself with Van Gogh’s famous painting. The image was processed by an app called RAGHAV.

The Copyright Office rejected Sahni’s application, saying that there was “not enough human involvement for the artist to claim copyright.” Essentially, finding that too much of the final output was created by the RAGHAV app, and not by Sahni.

But in his complaint filed earlier this month, Sahni argues that he did supply “the baseline creative elements” that qualify for copyright protection.

“The Author exercised creative control and input into the work by selecting himself taking the Base Photo, which established the baseline creative elements of the work, including that it would have buildings, a sunset, a large portion of the sky, and the relative location of each of these features,” reads the complaint.

“He then selected a specific style, the style of Van Gogh in The Starry Night, which is characterized by a specific color palette, broad brush strokes, curved lines, and other features, and used RAGHAV to modify the Base Photo to retain the baseline elements but add these additional creative features.”

Sahni has named Shira Perlmutter as the defendant in her official capacity as the Director of the Copyright Office.

Copyright Lately calls Sahni’s case “doctrinally more interesting” than Dr. Stephen Thaler’s, who attempted to have a machine named as the author of an image; in March the Supreme Court declined to hear his case.

But Copyright Lately notes Sahni is arguing that he is the author of the image since he took the photo and made creative decisions with the AI tool.

In a similar case, artist Jason M. Allen is also suing the Copyright Office over its refusal to register his AI picture, “Theatre D’opera Spatial.” The image infamously won an art contest in Colorado. Allen said the Office’s decision “put me in a terrible position, with no recourse against others who are blatantly and repeatedly stealing my work.”

Image credits: Via court documents.