• The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Stephen Thaler’s case over copyright for his A.I. artwork.
• The courts reaffirmed that copyright law requires traditional human authorship.
• Thaler’s legal team argues that the ruling could hinder A.I. innovation in creative industries.

Computer scientist Stephen Thaler‘s lengthy legal battle to see his A.I.-generated artwork granted copyright was dealt yet another blow on Monday when the Supreme Court declined to review a decision made by the U.S. Copyright Office in 2022.

The office ruled that without “human authorship,” the artwork was not eligible for copyright protection. This ruling was upheld in 2023 by the U.S. District Court and again last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. As lawmakers reaffirm that copyright can only be granted to work made by humans, leaving A.I.-generated outputs without protection, Thaler’s legal team has warned of the risk of “irreversibly” hindering the use of A.I. in the creative industries.

The work at the center of Thaler’s suit is A Recent Entrance to Paradise, which was generated in 2012 by DABUS, an A.I. system developed by Thaler. The Missouri-based computer scientist is the founder of Imagination Engines Incorporated, an advanced artificial neural network technology company.

U.S. president Donald Trump‘s administration encouraged the Supreme Court not to consider Thaler’s appeal, according to Reuters. Thaler’s lawyers have argued that time is running out to reverse a decision that “will have irreversibly and negatively impacted A.I. development and use in the creative industry during critically important years.”

Thaler’s 2023 filing noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled that “technological changes must be considered when interpreting the Copyright Act.”

Last year, the Copyright Office released new guidance that reaffirmed that A.I.-generated artworks made using text prompts will not be protected by copyright. It acknowledged that A.I. is a new technology but said existing copyright principles would not need to be updated. This is because A.I. prompting currently does not offer the user enough control to make them “the authors of the output.” This is the case regardless of the complexity of the prompt.

“No matter how many times a prompt is revised and resubmitted, the final output reflects the user’s acceptance of the A.I. system’s interpretation, rather than authorship of the expression it contains, the report argued.

Thaler first applied to register A Recent Entrance to Paradise with the copyright office in November 2018, listing DABUS as the author of the work and stating that it was “created autonomously by machine.” The office refused the application, responding, “We cannot register this work because it lacks the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim.”

Other requests for reconsideration, submitted by Thaler in September 2019, May 2020, and February 2022, were similarly rejected, again over a lack of “traditional human authorship.”