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U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material (www.cnbc.com)
submitted 18 hours ago by FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday ⁠to take up the issue of whether art generated by artificial intelligence can be copyrighted under U.S. law, turning away ​a case involving a computer ​scientist from Missouri who was ​denied a copyright for a piece of visual art made by his AI system.

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.

Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a federal copyright registration in 2018 covering “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” visual art he said his AI technology “DABUS” created. The image shows train tracks entering ‌a portal, surrounded by what appears to be green and purple plant imagery.

The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors ​to be eligible to receive a copyright. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration had urged the Supreme Court not to hear Thaler’s appeal.

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[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 39 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Ah, this is Thaler v. Perlmutter.

I seem to have picked up a reputation in these parts as being "pro-AI", so I'm not sure how my view will be interpreted, but Thaler is basically a loon. This case is not really over whether AI art can be copyrighted. It's about whether AI itself can hold copyright. ie, Thaler isn't arguing "I hold the copyright to this piece of art." He's arguing "my AI holds the copyright to this piece of art."

Since AI is not a legal person - it's neither human nor a corporation - this is basically an open and shut case. There is no entity capable of holding copyright in this case.

Since Thaler himself is explicitly disclaiming that he holds the copyright, that means the work in question has no copyright holder. Which puts it into the public domain. This specific piece in this specific circumstance, not all AI-generated pieces.

It's a commonly misinterpreted case.

[–] Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

So is he arguing that he owns the AI as a slave then and thus has control over the copyright? Because otherwise the AI would "decide" who gets to use the copyright then and it'll probably just say yes like these things do for everything else.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Work for hire. If I hire you to create something, I own the copyright.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 3 points 12 hours ago

I honestly don't know what his underlying reasoning is, he really seems like a loon with too much time and money on his hands to me. The only reason I pay any attention to this case is because Thaler v. Perlmutter has been coming up in headlines like this one for years now.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 7 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

That seems like an unacceptable loophole. I shouldn't be able to create derivative media and have it be legal and public domain. The unlicensed training itself is a rights violation, and and media produced from it should equally be a violation.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago

That is a different conversation. If we assume a legally trained AI strictly on data it was allowed to train on, they are saying the AI cannot hold copyright.

I also don't see a loophole here, since it was denied anyway.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I shouldn't be able to create derivative media and have it be legal and public domain.

Well, there's the rub - proving that AI-generated works are "derivative works" (in the legal sense).

This court case had nothing to do with that. I'm aware of a few cases that have established the opposite, that AI models and their products are not derivative works. Do you know of any that have established that they are?

The unlicensed training itself is a rights violation,

There are cases where it's been ruled fair use.

[–] mrmaplebar@fedia.io 0 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not a lawyer, maybe you are. I can't fully speak to the legalities at play.

But I am a programmer, and speaking technically, AI simply cannot produce an output without consuming other works to be used as training data. In many cases, the training data includes full copyrighted works (images, books, music, etc.) in their entirety.

I'm also an artist and musician, and someone who takes the matter of copyright seriously as any person who creates things should.

There are cases where it's been ruled fair use.

I'm not sure what the relevance of that is. From what I understand, the scope of those judgments are limited to the specific context of those uses, as well as the jurisdiction in which they were made, right?

One use might be deemed fair based on the specifics of that particular case, but that doesn't preclude that all uses of AI are fair, or even that a different/higher court might come to a different conclusion. After all, the opinions of a court are just that, opinions.

Reasonable people can disagree with the conclusions of a court, and until this reaches the height of the SCOTUS I don't think we can pretend like it's settled law. (And even then, they don't seem particularly bound to any precedent...)

It's worth noting, for the sake a more complete discussion, this draft report from the United States Copyright Office from May 2025, that many applications of generative AI are unlikely to be considered fair use when reasonably weighing all of the various factors:

We observe, however, that the first and fourth factors can be expected to assume considerable weight in the analysis. Different uses of copyrighted works in AI training will be more transformative than others. And given the volume, speed and sophistication with which AI systems can generate outputs, and the vast number of works that may be used in training, the impact on the markets for copyrighted works could be of unprecedented scale.

As generative AI involves a spectrum of uses and impacts, it is not possible to prejudge litigation outcomes. The Office expects that some uses of copyrighted works for generative AI training will qualify as fair use, and some will not. On one end of the spectrum, uses for purposes of noncommercial research or analysis that do not enable portions of the works to be reproduced in the outputs are likely to be fair. On the other end, the copying of expressive works from pirate sources in order to generate unrestricted content that competes in the marketplace, when licensing is reasonably available, is unlikely to qualify as fair use. Many uses, however, will fall somewhere in between. [Emphasis mine.]

Going off of basic logic alone...

I think if you look at something as blatant as the OpenAI Studio Ghibli filter, it's very clear that the works that were used in training could have been, and almost certainly should have been licensed from Studio Ghibli for the creation of such a feature, especially considering the output images from those for-profit tools could feasibly be used without restriction without even the most basic consent from Studio Ghibli as a whole (or the individual artists who, in Japan, may have some claim of copyright over the individual contributions, iirc).

How can anyone reasonably argue that this is a "fair" way to use Studio Ghibli's works?

I guess the courts will decide, potentially swayed by the political and corporate interests of our time. But speaking personally, it doesn't pass the smell test to me...

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not a lawyer, maybe you are. I can't fully speak to the legalities at play.

This is specifically about legalities, though.

AI simply cannot produce an output without consuming other works to be used as training data.

Obviously an AI can't work without being trained. Neither can a human.

The issue is about the legalities of this process.

From what I understand, the scope of those judgments are limited to the specific context of those uses, as well as the jurisdiction in which they were made, right?

As is the case for basically all court judgements, yeah. But once one's been made it becomes precedent that can be cited in subsequent cases that makes them go the same way a lot easier. So when a court rules that Anthropic was operating within fair use when it trained its LLMs off of books that makes it a lot more likely that OpenAI will win a ruling about its own similar training processes. They're opinions that matter.

It's worth noting, for the sake a more complete discussion, this draft report from the United States Copyright Office from May 2025,

Also worth noting that this is the lowest starting level for regulation. The US Copyright Office makes rules like these, then they get challenged in court and the court that can decide whether those rules actually conform to the law. Thaler v. Perlmutter is exactly such a case.

I think if you look at something as blatant as the OpenAI Studio Ghibli filter, it's very clear that the works that were used in training could have been, and almost certainly should have been licensed from Studio Ghibli for the creation of such a feature

Okay, you think that. What do the judges think? That's what it ultimately comes down to.

I should note that it's a very long-standing and well established principle that style cannot be copyrighted.

[–] mrmaplebar@fedia.io 2 points 4 hours ago

Obviously an AI can't work without being trained. Neither can a human.

This is a false equivalency that equates natural learning and human agency with "machine learning", when in that they are not remotely the same. This is a common and extremely flawed personification of a mathematical system that simply does not "learn" in the same way that a human being does.

Contrary to what seems to be a popular belief today, the creative insight of a human artist is not simply a combination of all of the other works of art that they have seen (akin to training data superimposed into a model). A human artist has the x-factors of personal agency, taste, and the constant sensory barrage of simply living as a huge part of their creative development. For every painting that a human artist sees, they see an unknowable score of other things that influence their perception of the world and art.

This is very much not a legal point that you're arguing here, by the way, it's a technical and practical one.

I should note that it's a very long-standing and well established principle that style cannot be copyrighted.

"Style" is not what's in question. It never was, and it wasn't a word that I used in my example.

ML models are not trained on "style". They are trained on actual works.

And in many cases (including in OpenAI's case) trained on an unimaginable amount of full copyrighted works, in their entirety, without license or consent from the copyright holders, often times pirated with DRM circumvented.

It's a simple fact of the technology that OpenAI's Ghibli filter could not have been made without training off of a large amount (probably every frame of every film, if I had to make an educated guess) of their actual artistic work. OpenAI have admitted that much themselves in court.

Okay, you think that. What do the judges think? That's what it ultimately comes down to.

You seem to have forgotten that this is a social media website comments section discussion, not a court of law.

I'm sharing my personal opinion, with a background in art, music, and programming, not law.

I'm entitled to do so, and I won't stop because it should go without saying that the copyright system matters a great deal to people who actually make things.

If you think you're above that then I'm not sure why you're even here, frankly. Are you here to argue that any of this is fair use? I don't see you making that case... (Maybe slightly timidly making that case, but not really going for it.)

In the end this topic is central to human culture and society, it's not some kind of intellectual exercise for only people in blue suits to muse about.

Welcome to "the court of public opinion", where Texan judges and Roman popes alike can be wrong.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 46 points 17 hours ago

Seems reasonable. This case is substantially similar to previous cases that were taken up by the supreme court - in particular a finding over whether a selfie generated by a monkey was copyrightable - and the lower court decisions are in line with the previous precedents set by the supreme court. So they're effectively just saying "Our opinion hasn't changed."

[–] grue@lemmy.world 12 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

ITT: people misunderstanding the issue being ruled on (or rather, not being ruled on by letting the lower court decision stand).

If he had applied for copyright over the image generated using "AI" as a tool, it (edit: probably^2^) would have been granted, with him listed as the human author. But that's not what he wanted. He's apparently Hell-bent on trying to get the work registered in the name of the "AI" system itself as the author, to so that he can claim that the government recognized the "AI" as a sentient being that can ~~own property~~ hold a copyright^1^ on its own behalf.

This is not the broad ruling against AI slop copyrightability that people think it is. It's a ruling against "AI" personhood.

(^1^ Copyright isn't a property right, BTW)

(^2^ He explicitly claimed he gave no creative contribution and that the work was created completely autonomously, and the court's ruling included excluding that from being copyrightable. It is if he hadn't done that -- if he had claimed he had directed it via prompts or whatever -- that I think they would have granted the copyright to him as the human author. It turns out that he changed his mind and did make that argument on appeal, but the court explicitly ignored and did not rule on it because it wasn't raised in his initial complaint.)

[–] Aatube@thriv.social 2 points 13 hours ago

on that note:

The Copyright Office has separately rejected bids by artists for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney. 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.

[–] FatCrab@slrpnk.net 2 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

This is wildly wrong in so many ways.

  1. Copyright is an intellectual property right, firmly grounded in property law doctrine--you are probably thinking of trademark, which is rooted in consumer protection law, or likeness rights which have their roots in privacy law.

  2. The copyrightability of AI generated content gets to where the nexus of creativity happens. Effectively, image generators (modern ones--i actually don't think DABUS is a diffusion model) are operated like a commissioned work. The user gives detailed instruction on par with what you might see in a commissioned work, and the creative event occurs when the "contractor" interprets that into the work. The copyright may be assigned or it may be licensed, in any case, the initial copyright holder is the contractor--or in our case, the model. Now, it is well established that only humans can have sua sponte property rights, including intellectual property right. Those can be assigned, licensed, etc., but they must first inher to a human and so an AI system literally has no copyright to assign, were it even able to engage in a contractual agreement to transfer said rights. As a result, no, there is no copyright in AI generated content and without a significant change in law there is unlikely to ever be any.

  3. If he had sought to register the copyright under purely his own name, he would have been committing a fraud on the copyright office. This wasn't explicitly established at the time of his suit, but it has been very explicitly the case now for over a year. When registering copyright you must declare any AI-generated components. Failure, or refusal, to do so constitutes a fraud on the office and such fraud is sanctionable up to revoking the copyright in the work in its entirety, even if the AI-gen component was only partial. This is really important to note with software copyright and the kind of litigation we're likely to see wrt piracy in the future (i.e., defendant claims plaintiffs did not declare vibe coded components and thus committed a fraud on the office and should be sanctioned with full revocation of the right as a signal to other would-be claimants).

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[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 22 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

If you want to call yourself an artist, do the work yourself, Stephen.

You limpdick, no talent ass clown.

[–] msfroh@lemmy.ca 15 points 17 hours ago (5 children)

My understanding is that he did do the work of creating the AI. This isn't just someone using ChatGPT.

In this case, it's not that he's trying to claim copyright for himself based on coming up with a prompt. He's spent years applying for patents and copyrights with the AI listed as the creator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DABUS

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 14 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

He can copyright his software then? That's like saying that if I create a computer game where the computer also plays, I own the copyright to every single game played by the computer. It's just dumb. They stole the artwork that it was trained on, so move along thief.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 10 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Is there any literature that actually says DABUS exists? Everything I see online is talking about the spectacle of Stephen Thaler claiming it made something - and trying to patent it in several different countries across multiple continents - not how (or if) DABUS exists or functions.

DABUS stands for "Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience," which sounds... suspicious.

[–] msfroh@lemmy.ca 6 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah... Checking his website at https://imagination-engines.com/founder.htm, he certainly seems like an "interesting" character.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

In other words, it's not that he as the human operating the "AI" is trying to claim copyright in his own name, it's that he's trying to set a precedent where the "AI" can hold copyright in its own name.

He's trying to pretend that his glorified pile of statistics is sentient, and get it legally recognized as such. 🤡

[–] msfroh@lemmy.ca 10 points 15 hours ago

Exactly.

Most of the comments in this thread are accusing him of trying to take credit for the work of a machine that's just imitating other work. It's the FuckAI echo chamber and people who didn't actually read the article.

In this case, it's more like he's claiming to have created a genuinely creative being that deserves rights previously reserved for humans (like copyrights and patents).

It's a completely different (and IMO, much weirder) story than people are assuming.

[–] Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social 5 points 17 hours ago

It sounds like he has way too much money and time on his hands.

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[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 4 points 16 hours ago

Supreme Court Tells AI Enthusiast To Get Wrecked

[–] ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 3 points 16 hours ago (5 children)

How can you copyright something you didn't make?

[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

In the same way Disney owns the copyright of what their workers made.

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[–] tidderuuf@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago (11 children)

Gonna be fun times in courts as anyone can claim something was generated by AI even if an artist claims they created it.

I wonder if this will end up limited to art or can be expanded to other copyrighted works.

[–] Iconoclast@feddit.uk 11 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

It's not generally difficult at all for an artist to prove that they are the original creator of a certain piece. My photography for example is available for anyone for free and in high resolution but I'm the only one with the full resolution pictures and RAW files. So much data is lost when a picture is compressed into .jpg format.

[–] tabular@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago (12 children)

Seems impossible to me but I'm not an artist - I write code as a hobby and see no way to definitively prove I wrote any code that an AI could also produce. Is there any aspect of art creation that an AI cannot replicate?

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