No Human Creator, No Copyright: Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Case For AI-Generated Art

TV & FilmTech

Mar 5

The letters AI as part of a scale — Image Source: The Economist

On Monday, March 2, the United States Supreme Court decided against hearing a case pertaining to copyrights for AI-generated art. After a lower court struck his case down, Stephen Thalier appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was seeking copyright protection for an image titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise”. The image was entirely made with AI, but the A. system used to make it was created by Thalier himself. The image displays train tracks entering a portal with green and purple plants surrounding the tracks.

The Copyright Office was the first to reject Thalier, claiming that creative works need human authors to be eligible. In 2023, a federal judge in Washington supported that decision, and in 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the decision. Thalier’s lawyers argued against the decision, claiming, “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 Trump administration has urged the court to reject the appeal, saying “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.”