The logic behind the US Copyright Office’s ‘strong view’ on Thaler’s AI

The office is not backing down over Stephen Thaler’s appeal to copyright an AI-generated landscape image. Ron Dreben, Meaghan Kent and Matthew Julyan of Morgan Lewis explain why.

The threshold issue of human authorship as a prerequisite to obtain copyright registration at the US Copyright Office continues to be the subject of debate.

In essence, the Copyright Office has recently reaffirmed its position that human authorship is required for copyright registration in the US, following Stephen Thaler’s 2018 application to register the AI-generated visual work, A Recent Entrance to Paradise (pictured).