Thaler v. Perlmutter Further Confirms Human Authorship Required for Copyright Protection

On March 18, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed the lower court’s decision to deny copyright registration for an AI-generated artwork where the AI was listed as the sole author. 

The court relied on a longstanding interpretation of the Copyright Act, which requires that a copyrightable work must be “authored in the first instance by a human being.” The court applied the rule directly and held that the AI-generated artwork could not be registered because an AI is not human. The court stated that its role is to apply the law as written and left any policy debates about AI authorship to Congress. Because the AI was listed as the sole author on the copyright application, the court did not opine on how much human input in the work was required to qualify an AI user as the creator of a work such that the work would be eligible for copyright protection. Neither did the court opine on whether the creator of a generative AI model could be considered the author of an AI-generated work.

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