Computer scientist petitions US Supreme Court to reconsider AI-generated copyright – JURIST
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on October 12, 2025
Computer scientist Stephen Thaler on Friday formally petitioned the US Supreme Court to decide whether creative works produced entirely by artificial intelligence can qualify for copyright protection. Thaler’s filing challenges the 2025 DC Circuit Court decision which reaffirmed that only works with human authorship are eligible for copyright under US law.
In his petition for certiorari, Thaler asks the supreme court to answer one question: Whether works outputted by an AI system without a direct, traditional authorial contribution by a natural person can be copyrighted. He argues that the DC appeal court and the US Copyright Office have imposed a “human authorship” rule not found in the Copyright Act itself, warning that this interpretation leaves a growing category of AI-generated innovation without protection.
The dispute began when Thaler sought to register an artwork titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” created autonomously by his machine-learning system known as the Creativity Machine. The US District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the application, finding that non-human authorship disqualified the work from copyright. As detailed in the district court ruling, the court held that “human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.”
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia later affirmed that reasoning, concluding that the Copyright Office acted properly because “As a matter of statutory law, the Copyright Act requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being,” and Thaler had “listed the Creativity Machine as the sole author.” The appellate panel emphasized that the AI system “is undeniably a machine, not a human being. The appellate opinion reinforced a long line of precedent defining authorship as a uniquely human endeavor.
The broader debate centers on how courts define authorship, whether originality alone should suffice or whether the law demands a human mind at the moment of creation. That question highlights the growing tension between traditional notions of creativity and the realities of generative technology, where human input may be minimal or nonexistent.
The case represents the first time the top US court has been asked to decide whether original works created without human involvement can meet the legal standard for copyright. If heard, the decision could reshape the future of intellectual property law, determining whether works generated by autonomous systems are covered by constitutional and statutory copyright protections.
