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ARTICLE · 08 SEPTEMBER 2023

Copyright Office Seeking Comment On Human Authorship Requirements For AI-Generated Works

Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP
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Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP

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On the heels of one of the first district court decisions that denied a copyright for AI-generated work that entirely lacked human authorship and left open the question of what level of human intervention...

United StatesIntellectual Property
Mark Baghdassarian
Mark Baghdassarian
Zachary B. Fields
Zachary B. Fields
Jonathan Pepin
Jonathan Pepin
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On the heels of one of the first district court decisions that denied a copyright for AI-generated work that entirely lacked human authorship and left open the question of what level of human intervention will be required in order to qualify for copyright protection in the future, as explained in our recent alert about Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 22-1564 (D.D.C. Aug. 18, 2023), the Copyright Office issued a "Notice of Inquiry on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence" (Notice). That Notice requested input from the public regarding "the scope and level of human authorship, if any, in copyright claims for material produced in whole or in part by generative AI." As it explained, the Copyright Office has sought this input because, "over the past several years, the Office has begun to receive applications to register works containing AI-generated material, some of which name AI systems as an author or co-author" and "[a]t the same time copyright owners have brought

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