Artificial intelligence tools are now used routinely to generate and create images, music, text, and other content. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision addresses an important question: can something created entirely by AI, without any human involvement, obtain copyright protection? On March 2, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in Thaler v. Perlmutter, 687 F. Supp. 3d 140 (D.D.C. 2023). That effectively means the court rejected the assertion that something created entirely by AI, without any human involvement, can obtain copyright protection.

In Thaler v. Perlmutter, Dr. Steven Thaler, a computer scientist, built an AI system called the “Creativity Machine”. In 2018, he submitted a copyright application for artwork the machine generated entirely on its own, called “A Recent Entrance to Paradise”. The application described the piece as “created autonomously by machine”. The U.S. Copyright Office denied the application, reasoning that copyright law has always required a human author, and the Copyright Office’s internal review board upheld that denial twice more on appeal. Thaler challenged the decision in court, unsuccessfully, at the federal district court in 2023, and again at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2025. He then asked the Supreme Court to weigh in. The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case means the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling stands, which effectively confirms that a work created without a human author cannot be copyrighted.

Thaler admitted in his copyright application that no human contributed anything creative at all. He argued at one point that he had “directed” the machine, but the courts rejected that argument, since he had already told the Copyright Office the image was made autonomously. The D.C. Circuit Court’s reasoning relied heavily on the text of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, which extends protection only to “original works of authorship”, which courts in the U.S. have consistently interpreted as requiring a human author.

The decision carries several practical implications for anyone using AI tools to create content. The main takeaway is that work generated entirely by AI, with no human creative input, is not protected under current law. So if a person types a prompt into an AI platform and uses the result as-is, without meaningfully editing, arranging, or otherwise changing it, that output is likely not eligible for copyright protection. In practice, that means others could freely use it without legal consequence.

Using some AI does not automatically forfeit protection, however. The Copyright Office has said that relying on AI for tasks like spell-checking, color correction, or producing a rough draft that a person then substantially revises, edits, or folds into a larger work will not, on its own, disqualify the finished work. The more a human contributes by selecting, editing, and arranging the material, the stronger the claim to human authorship. What remains unresolved is exactly how much human involvement is needed before a work qualifies for copyright protection. The law in this area is still evolving, with other cases working their way through the courts, including a case that involves a work created using more than 600 prompts to refine an AI-generated image.

Based on the Thaler case, the overall message is that using AI in a creative process does not automatically preclude copyright protection. However, the less human involvement a work reflects, the weaker any claim to human authorship becomes, and using AI alone to generate content does not qualify for copyright protection. If you have any questions regarding AI and/or copyrights, please reach out to us at info@sharmalawpllc.com.