The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up the issue of whether art generated by artificial intelligence can be copyrighted under U.S. law, turning away a case involving a computer scientist from Missouri who was denied a copyright for a piece of visual art made by his AI system.
Plaintiff Stephen Thaler had appealed to the justices after lower courts upheld a U.S. Copyright Office decision that the AI-crafted visual art at issue in the case was ineligible for copyright protection because it did not have a human creator.
Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a federal copyright registration in 2018 covering “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” visual art he said his AI technology “DABUS” created. The image shows train tracks entering a portal, surrounded by what appears to be green and purple plant imagery.
The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be eligible to receive a copyright. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration had urged the Supreme Court not to hear Thaler’s appeal.
Easiest should be all digital art is not copyrightable as it was created with software that did most of the work and the “artist” could not have produced it without that software. But that would invalidate almost all Hollywood movies from the last 30 years lol.
I mean, you could make the same argument for paint brushes for traditional art. Or pencils. There’s a really big difference between someone using a tablet and an Undo hotkey to draw something digitally vs. someone making something with AI. One of those clearly requires a ton of skill; one does not require any.
I said easiest, I didn’t say that’s the way it should be.
This is a really weird idea of what making digital art actually involves. Drawing on a screen with a stylus isn’t somehow not art made by a person because it’s digital instead of on paper. Even if you use a mouse to make pixel art or modify 3D models, that’s still human artistic decision making involved. Non-AI digital artwork doesn’t involve just pressing a button and getting art.