The Copyright Registration Guidance published by the United States Copyright Office in March mainly addressed whether a human providing simple prompts or other input to an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm could obtain a copyright registration for the output that the AI algorithm generated based on the human input. … Now a few months later, a court has handed out a decision on whether to grant a copyright registration to the AI algorithm in Thaler v. Perlmutter, 1:22-cv-01564 (D.D.C).
Is AI Technology Creative?
On March 16, 2023, the United States Copyright Office (USCO) published Copyright Registration Guidance (Guidance) on generative AI. In the Guidance, the USCO reminded us that it “will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.” This statement curiously conjures the notion of a machine creating copyrightable works autonomously.