Supreme Court Lets Stand Human Authorship Standard for Copyright

The justices declined to hear Stephen Thaler's appeal for his "Creativity Machine," cementing that only humans can hold copyrights, for now.

Stephen Thaler wanted his AI system to own a copyright. On Monday, the Supreme Court said no.

The Court's refusal to hear Thaler v. Perlmutter leaves intact the D.C. Circuit's ruling that the Copyright Act requires human authorship, according to Courthouse News Service. Thaler had argued his Creativity Machine should be recognized as the author of an image titled "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," generated entirely by his DABUS AI system without human input. The justices offered no comment on their denial.

The decision arrives as video creators face an explosion of AI-generated content testing every assumption about authorship, ownership, and authenticity. ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 can mimic Tom Cruise so convincingly that Disney and the studio behind Mission: Impossible issued cease-and-desist letters last week, according to TechNews City. X announced Monday it will suspend revenue sharing for 90 days for creators who post AI war footage without disclosure, following discoveries of bot networks using synthetic conflict videos to manipulate viewers, Lokmat Times reports.

The Thaler case represents the purest test of AI authorship, a work created with zero human input beyond pressing start. Most AI content exists in grayer territory. Artist Jason Allen continues fighting in Colorado federal court over his Midjourney-generated Théâtre D'opéra Spatial, arguing his extensive prompting and editing constitute human authorship, ARTnews reports. His case poses a different question: How much human involvement transforms AI output into human creation?

"The Supreme Court's decision confirms what we've suspected, that courts aren't ready to recognize machines as authors," said a spokesperson familiar with the case who declined to be identified. "But it doesn't answer the harder questions about hybrid creation."

The timing matters. YouTuber David Gardner filed a class-action lawsuit against Runway AI on February 24, alleging the company scraped thousands of YouTube videos to train its models without permission, Reuters reports. The suit targets the input side of the copyright equation, not who owns AI output, but whether AI companies can use copyrighted material for training.

OpenAI faces similar scrutiny over its Sora video model. Following the Supreme Court's decision, legal experts are demanding transparency about whether YouTube and Hollywood films were used in training data without licensing, The Verge reports. The company has declined to share its training data sources.

China took a different approach. New regulations that took effect Saturday require all AI-generated content to carry visible labels and metadata markers, according to Digital Watch Observatory. Platforms like Douyin and WeChat must detect and flag unlabeled synthetic media immediately. The rules combat both misinformation and copyright infringement through mandatory disclosure rather than ownership debates.

The U.S. approach remains fragmented. While the Copyright Office maintains that human authorship is a bedrock requirement, as confirmed by Monday's Supreme Court decision, enforcement varies by platform. X's new 90-day revenue ban represents one of the strictest creator-level policies, while other platforms rely on voluntary disclosure or user reporting.

Video creators using AI tools should document their human contributions, including prompting, editing, and selection, to strengthen potential copyright claims. Platforms may accelerate content authentication requirements following X's aggressive revenue suspension policy. Training data transparency will likely become the next major legal battleground as input-side lawsuits proliferate. China's mandatory labeling approach could influence U.S. platform policies even without federal regulation. The gap between pure AI creation, as in Thaler's case, and human-directed AI use, as in Allen's, remains legally undefined.

The Supreme Court may have closed one door, but others remain. As ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 demonstrates, the technology for creating convincing synthetic media has outpaced the legal framework for managing it. The question now is whether we're prepared for a world where creation and authorship have fundamentally diverged.