2023-08-23 08:00:06
A US federal judge “ruled on Friday that creative works created by artificial intelligence are not covered under US copyright law,” reports Billboard magazine :In a 15-page written opinion, Judge Beryl Howell upheld the US Copyright Office’s decision to deny copyright registration to the computer scientist Stephen Thaler for an image created solely by an AI model. The judge cited decades of legal precedent that such protection is granted only to works created by humans. “The act of human creation, and the best way to encourage human individuals to participate in that creation and thereby promote science and the useful arts, was… central to American copyright law from its inception.” beginnings,” the judge wrote. “Non-human actors do not need incentives with the promise of exclusive rights under US law, and therefore copyright was not designed to reach them.”
In a statement Friday, Thaler’s attorney, Ryan Abbot, said he and his client “disagree with the district court’s ruling” and vowed to appeal: “In our view, copyright law is clear that the public is the main beneficiary of the law and this is for the best.” It is achieved by promoting the generation and dissemination of new works, regardless of how they are created”.
Although novel, the decision was not entirely surprising. For too long, federal courts have strictly limited themselves to content created by humans, rejecting it for works created by animals, by the forces of nature, and even those that claim to have been created by divine spirits, such as religious texts.
The Hollywood Reporter notes that ” various courts have come to the same conclusion In another case, a federal appeals court said a photo captured by a monkey cannot be copyrighted because the animals do not qualify for protection, even though the lawsuit was decided on other grounds. Howell cited the ruling in his “Plaintiff cannot point to any instance in which a court has recognized copyright in a work that originated with a non-human,” said the order, which granted summary judgment in favor of the copyright office. author.
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