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. The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be eligible to receive a copyright.
Those artists argued that they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance - unlike Thaler, who said his system created “A Recent Entrance to Paradise” independently.
A federal judge in Washington upheld the office’s decision in Thaler’s case in 2023, writing that human authorship is a “bedrock requirement of copyright.”
“Although the Copyright Act does not define the term ‘author,’ multiple provisions of the act make clear that the term refers to a human rather than a machine,” the administration said. The Supreme Court previously rejected Thaler’s request to hear his argument in a separate case involving prototypes for a beverage holder and a light beacon concerning whether AI-generated inventions should be eligible for U.S. patent protection.
(Adapted from Source: Reuters, 2026)
Reuters (2026) U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material, CNBC. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/02/us-supreme-court-declines-to-hear-dispute-over-copyrights-for-ai-generated-material.html (Accessed: 4 March 2026).
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. The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be eligible to receive a copyright.
Those artists argued that they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance - unlike Thaler, who said his system created “A Recent Entrance to Paradise” independently.
A federal judge in Washington upheld the office’s decision in Thaler’s case in 2023, writing that human authorship is a “bedrock requirement of copyright.”
“Although the Copyright Act does not define the term ‘author,’ multiple provisions of the act make clear that the term refers to a human rather than a machine,” the administration said. The Supreme Court previously rejected Thaler’s request to hear his argument in a separate case involving prototypes for a beverage holder and a light beacon concerning whether AI-generated inventions should be eligible for U.S. patent protection.
(Adapted from Source: Reuters, 2026)
Reuters (2026) U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material, CNBC. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/02/us-supreme-court-declines-to-hear-dispute-over-copyrights-for-ai-generated-material.html (Accessed: 4 March 2026).