On March 18, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a notable ruling in Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 23-5233, 2025 WL 839178 (D.C. Cir. Mar. 18, 2025), affirming the U.S. Copyright Office’s denial of copyright registration for an image generated by artificial intelligence. Thaler reinforces a foundational element of copyright law: Copyright protection extends only to human authors. For those attempting to navigate the evolving intersection of intellectual property and artificial intelligence, this case offers a certain degree of clarity but leaves several important questions unanswered.
The Thaler case stems from Dr. Stephen Thaler’s attempt to register visual artwork created by a generative AI that he created and named the “Creativity Machine.” In May of 2019, Dr. Thaler submitted a copyright registration application to the Copyright Office seeking to register an artwork titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise” generated by the Creativity Machine. Notably, Dr. Thaler listed the Creativity Machine as the author in his application and provided his own name as the copyright claimant. Dr. Thaler listed “2-D artwork, created autonomously by machine” in the section of the application labeled “Author Created”. The Copyright Office denied the application on the basis that a “human being did not create the work”, citing the Supreme Court’s opinion in Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53 (1884), in support.
Dr. Thaler sought a reconsideration of the application. Though he conceded that the work lacked human authorship, Dr. Thaler argued that this requirement was an antiquated relic from “the Gilded Age” that was unconstitutional and unsupported by statute or case law. Additionally, Dr. Thaler argued that he owned the copyright under the work-made-for-hire doctrine. The Copyright Office Review Board affirmed the denial, and Dr. Thaler appealed the decision in federal court. The District Court for the District of Columbia ultimately affirmed the Copyright Office’s denial, holding that “[h]uman authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright” based on caselaw and the text of the Copyright Act of 1976 (the “Copyright Act”).
In affirming the district court, the D.C. Circuit similarly leaned into the text of the Copyright Act, holding that the statute was clear in contemplating an author as a human being and not as a machine. Indeed, the provisions of the Copyright Act, according to the court, presupposed that authors were human beings by connecting various traits only attributable to human beings to copyright protections (e.g., capacity to own property, lifespan, ability to bequeath property to family members). Moreover, the court found the fact that, prior to the Copyright Act, the Copyright Office consistently interpretated the word “author” as referring to human beings. Congress’s subsequent enactment of the Copyright Act in 1976 with the term “author” served as strong evidence that Congress ratified the Copyright Office’s interpretation. Ultimately, according to the court, the best reading of the Copyright Act’s text unequivocally led to the conclusion that only humans are authors. Because Dr. Thaler’s application listed the Creativity Machine as the work’s sole author, the Copyright Office properly denied the application.
In further support of its conclusion, the court pointed to historical precedent, including the Supreme Court’s ruling in Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co., which tied copyright to human creativity, and to the Ninth Circuit’s 2018 decision, Naruto v. Slater, 888 F.3d 418 (9th Cir. 2018), which denied copyright to a monkey that took selfies on a wildlife photographer’s unattended camera. The D.C. Circuit emphasized that Thaler’s application explicitly disclaimed any human involvement, leaving no room to debate whether his role in designing the AI constituted authorship – a claim he raised too late in the process to be considered.
Thaler does not completely close the door on AI-related copyrights. The court acknowledged that works involving human collaboration with AI tools might still qualify for protection, depending on the extent of human contribution. However, where AI operates autonomously, as in Thaler, copyright law draws a firm line. The decision aligns with the Copyright Office’s current guidance, which allows registration for works where humans exert meaningful creative control over AI outputs, but not for purely machine-generated content. In the end, according to the court, it was Congress’s, and not the judiciary’s, prerogative to accommodate new technology under copyright law.
At a broad level, Thaler emphasizes the importance of documenting human involvement in AI-assisted creations. Businesses leveraging generative AI should ensure that employees or creators actively shape the AI’s output to bolster any claims to copyright. While the D.C. Circuit sidestepped broader constitutional and policy debates about AI authorship, its narrow focus on statutory interpretation suggests that legislative action would be necessary to expand copyright protections to AI-generated works.
As AI continues to evolve and become ever-more intertwined with creative processes, expect more cases to test the boundaries of copyright law. For the moment, Thaler has set a clear boundary: copyright remains a human domain.
