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Attempt to get copyright on wholly AI-generated art gunned down by US Supreme Court
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Libre Culture
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Libre culture is all about empowering people. While the general philosophy stems greatly from the free software movement, libre culture is much broader and encompasses other aspects of culture such as music, movies, food, technology, etc.
Some beliefs include but aren’t limited to:
- That copyright should expire after a certain period of time.
- That knowledge should be available to people, not locked away.
- That no entity should have unjust control or possession of others.
- That mass surveillance is about mass control, not justice.
- That we can all band together to help liberate each other.
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US patent and copyright law is pretty clear that it exists to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” The idea is to give people some legal protection to encourage people to share what they create.
“AI” is not a person. It can’t receive copyright protections. It’s essentially a word and image producing machine. No one gets copyrights for what it produces because no person is controlling what comes out. Sure, someone writes a prompt. But, they can’t, with any certainty—make changes that yield intentional changes in the output.
Contrast with a camera. The camera is a machine that produces an image. The photographer has control over the exposure, lighting, subject, scene, etc. They can use their creativity and ingenuity to produce specific effects.
Think of any machine that produces something. Does the operator have creative control over what comes out? You can’t copyright a shot of espresso, a potato pulled up from the dirt or a particular car rolling off the assembly line no matter how you prompt those machines.
You could use a backhoe, a machine gun, a supersoaker, a whisk, a rotary phone or an oven to make art but it matters what the intention is, what control you have and how transformative it is.
“AI” prompting simply doesn’t meet standard for creative works.
Now, you can take the output from that and create something. That, depending on how transformative your changes are, may be eligible for copyright protection. An image made into a poster with manually added text, image adjustments, edits, etc. could get copyright protection while the original image still does not.
Yes. I'm pretty sure that's 100% correct with the person who creates a picture with generative AI. I think the far more interesting question (and most discussed one, apart from this court case) is, what happens to the transformed works. All the questions regarding the datasets, their licensing etc.
And copyright, IP and patents are really weird. I think extending copyright to 70 years after death isn't exactly done to foster innovation. We get all the third parties, labels, publishers, industry, web platforms earn probably way more than they should and the artists themselves not enough.
And then with every example there's more weirdness. You can definitely patent the process of making an espresso. Maybe copyright a recipe in some jurisdictions. Patent a potato, and the machine that digs it up.
With the camera, I have some additional weird rules. Once I snap a picture of a building, somehow the intellectual rights of the architect can get in the mix. Sometimes they don't. I think some rules governing immaterial and intellectual goods are a bit complex. And they don't always achieve what they're trying to do.