In a contemporary legal universe, a new frontier has been charted, one where artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright law clash in contentious battles, forcing humanity to contemplate the depth of AI’s creative influence.
The latest episode in this unfolding drama has unfolded in the United States District Court, where Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled on Friday that AI creations cannot obtain copyright protection. This bold decision punctuates the lawsuit leveled against the US Copyright Office by Dr. Stephen Thaler. Thaler, inventor of the Creativity Machine algorithm, derived an image through this AI and sought to patent his high-tech creation. His request, however, hit a brick wall.
The US Copyright Office, in its long-standing ethos, maintained that only works crafted with a “guiding human hand” could qualify for copyright. Thaler’s AI-generated artwork, as impressive as it may be due to its cutting-edge technology, lacked the human touch from inception to execution. Thaler disputed the Office’s rejection, arguing that the denial was “arbitrary, capricious … and not in accordance with the law”. Thaler’s outcry fell on deaf ears, however, as Judge Howell upheld the necessity of human intervention in creative processes. This seemingly antiquated requirement has again proven to be the bedrock principle of copyright law.
Judge Howell further broadened the discourse, acknowledging the emerging quandary of defining the necessary human input in copyrightable AI-formed art. In her ruling, she drew mention of precedent-setting cases which further established this core requirement. One peculiar case highlighted in her ruling tied back to a monkey selfie – a fascinating anecdote that firmly cemented the ‘human authorship’ precedence in copyright cases. Contrasting this, a case involving a woman who penned a book transcribing “words she believed were dictated to her” by a supernatural ‘voice,’ was deemed copyright-worthy.
Despite the court ruling, Thaler isn’t relenting. He plans to appeal the case. His attorney, Ryan Abbot of prominent firm Brown Neri Smith & Khan LLP, expressed dissent with the court’s interpretation of the Copyright Act. Meanwhile, the US Copyright Office picked up on this discord, affirming its belief in the court’s verdict.
Thaler’s setback may amplify a rising chorus of legal battles involving AI and copyright laws. Comedian and author Sarah Silverman, along with two fellow authors, have thrown the gauntlet at OpenAI and Meta, suing them for their data scraping practices. In a somewhat similar vein, programmer and lawyer Matthew Butterick has accused Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI of software piracy stemming from the same controversial data scraping.
This cascading shift towards disputes against AI-based creations and copyright infringement paints a profound picture for the future. As AI continues to evolve, pushing the boundaries of its capacity for autonomous creation, it is eliciting pivotal questions around the scope and limitations of copyright law in an age of synthetic intelligence. This friction between the growth of AI and the established laws of human creation underpins a need for the legal system to evolve, defining and establishing what may become the new norms of copyright jurisprudence.
As the saga of AI vs. Copyright Law continues, it remains a mystery how the copyright law will accommodate or resist the creative prowess of AI. For now, and until further groundbreaking rulings crush old legal barricades, the gavel rests squarely on the side of human creatives.
