The lesser courts had consistently upheld the Copyright Office’s 2022 decision to deny his picture «A Recent Entrance to Paradise» protections, holding that Copyright must have clear human authorship.
The picture was created solely by his AI system «DABUS» in 2018, and Thaler said that «The Copyright Office will have irreversibly and negatively impacted AI development and use in the creative industry during critically important years.»
The case has wide repercussions for the creative industry’s use of AI in artworks, but yet to be covered by the courts are several cases with significant human involvement, where the AI assists human creativity instead of creating it alone.