The Supreme Court of the United States has reaffirmed the position of the country’s Copyright Office, determining that images generated exclusively by artificial intelligence cannot be protected by copyright.
This decision follows the request of Dr. Stephen Thaler, who had attempted to register a copyright for his image titled A Recent Entrance to Paradise. The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, arguing that it lacked the necessary ‘human authorship’ required to grant such protection.
Human authorship is what can be registered
Despite the court’s denial, there is a possibility that AI-generated images could be considered copyrightable if they are manually modified.
In a recent case, the creator of the AI image generation tool, Invoke, managed to secure copyright over an AI-generated image in 2025, arguing that the image contained sufficient elements of human authorship to meet legal requirements.
However, verifying that an image has been generated by AI presents significant challenges, complicating the registration and management of copyright.
On one occasion, the Copyright Office issued a registration for a graphic novel that included images generated by AI, only to later rectify the situation, maintaining the copyright for the story and design but excluding the images themselves.
In this context of legal uncertainty, a debate arises about authorship and rights in an environment where artificial intelligence plays an increasingly prominent role in artistic creation. With this recent decision from the Supreme Court, the legal landscape for works generated by AI continues to evolve, and the creative community must stay alert to the upcoming developments in this rapidly changing field.
