The highest judicial court in the United States will not reconsider a lower court’s decision that AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted.
The US Supreme Court has opted not to take on a case debating the copyright eligibility of AI-generated art, as reported by Reuters. This decision follows an appeal from Stephen Thaler, a Missouri-based computer scientist, after a court affirmed a ruling that AI-generated art cannot receive copyright protection.
In 2019, Thaler’s request to copyright an image titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” created by his algorithm, was denied by the US Copyright Office. The office reviewed this decision in 2022, concluding that the image lacked “human authorship” and thus was not eligible for copyright.
After appealing, US District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled in 2023 that copyright requires human authorship, a decision upheld in 2025 by a federal appeals court in Washington, DC. Thaler then petitioned the Supreme Court in October 2025, arguing this causes a chill on potential creative AI usage.
Last year, the Copyright Office released new guidelines indicating that AI-generated art based on text prompts is not protected by copyright.
This Supreme Court decision follows multiple efforts by Thaler to secure copyrights and patents for his AI systems’ outputs. Similarly, the US federal circuit court ruled that AI systems cannot patent inventions as they are not human, a position reinforced by the US Patent Office’s 2024 guidelines, which state AI systems cannot be inventors on patents, although people may use AI to help develop them. The UK Supreme Court reached a similar conclusion in a case presented by Thaler.