The U.S. Supreme Court has shut its doors on taking up a closely watched case over whether AI-generated art can be copyrighted.
The dispute centers on a copyright application filed by Missouri computer scientist Stephen Thaler for a piece of visual art created by his AI system known as DABUS, reports Reuters.
Thaler applied for federal copyright protection in 2018 for the image titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” which he said was generated autonomously by the AI system. The artwork depicts train tracks entering a portal surrounded by green and purple plant-like imagery.
The U.S. Copyright Office rejected the application in 2022, concluding that copyright protection requires a human author.
A federal judge in Washington upheld that decision in 2023, writing that human authorship is a “bedrock requirement of copyright.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the ruling in 2025.
By declining to hear the case, the Supreme Court left those decisions in place.
Thaler’s attorneys had argued that the issue was increasingly important as generative AI becomes more widely used across creative industries.
“Even if it later overturns the Copyright Office’s test in another case, it will be too late. The Copyright Office will have irreversibly and negatively impacted AI development and use in the creative industry during critically important years.”
The federal government urged the court not to take the appeal.
“Although the Copyright Act does not define the term ‘author,’ multiple provisions of the Act make clear that the term refers to a human rather than a machine.”
The Copyright Office has separately rejected copyright claims from artists seeking protection for images generated with AI tools such as Midjourney, though those cases involve works created with human assistance rather than entirely autonomous systems.
The Supreme Court previously declined to hear a separate case brought by Thaler over whether AI-generated inventions can receive US patent protection.
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