Supreme Court Declines Case Regarding AI-Generated Art

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to step into a growing legal battle over whether works generated entirely by artificial intelligence qualify for copyright protection under American law.

The case centered on Missouri computer scientist Stephen Thaler, who sought federal copyright registration for a piece of visual art produced by his AI system. Lower courts had already sided with the U.S. Copyright Office, which determined that the work was ineligible because it lacked a human author.

Thaler, a resident of St. Charles, Missouri, filed his application in 2018 for an image titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” He asserted that the artwork was autonomously created by his AI system, known as DABUS. The image depicts train tracks leading into a portal surrounded by vivid green and purple plant life.

In 2022, the Copyright Office formally rejected the application, concluding that copyright law requires human authorship. During the review period, the Trump administration urged the Supreme Court not to take up Thaler’s appeal, Reuters reported.

In a separate but related development, the Copyright Office has also rejected attempts by artists to secure copyright protection for images created using Midjourney. Unlike Thaler — who maintained that DABUS independently generated the work — those artists argued they should retain rights because they used AI tools as assistants in their creative process.

A federal judge in Washington upheld the Copyright Office’s decision in 2023, stating that human authorship remains a “bedrock requirement of copyright.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed that ruling in 2025, reinforcing the longstanding principle that intellectual property protections are tied to human creativity.

In urging the justices to intervene, Thaler’s attorneys warned that the issue carries enormous weight amid the rapid expansion of generative AI technologies. After the Court declined review, his lawyers cautioned that “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, however, maintained that the statute is clear. “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 administration said.

The justices have previously rejected similar arguments from Thaler. In an earlier dispute involving AI-generated prototypes for a beverage holder and a light beacon, the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied patent applications on the grounds that an inventor must be human.

While the Court declined to weigh in on AI copyright protections, it did issue a significant ruling Monday evening in a separate case involving parental rights and education policy in California.

The justices granted a request from a group of parents to reinstate a federal district court ruling barring public schools from “misleading parents about their children’s gender presentation.” The order also requires schools to follow parental instructions concerning the names and pronouns used for their children, according to Conservative Brief.

In a seven-page opinion, the majority stated that the parents were likely to prevail on their claims that California’s policies infringe upon their rights to freely exercise religion and to direct the upbringing and education of their children — protections long recognized under constitutional precedent.

Two members of the Court’s liberal bloc dissented. Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, criticized the majority’s action, arguing that Monday’s ruling “shows, not for the first time, how our emergency docket can malfunction.”

The controversy began in 2023 when two teachers challenged their school district’s gender identity policies, seeking religious exemptions. Parents later joined the lawsuit, asserting that their children had either socially transitioned at school without their knowledge or were influenced to do so.

After a district court ruled in favor of the challengers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit temporarily blocked that decision pending appeal. The parents then petitioned the Supreme Court for immediate intervention — a request the justices ultimately granted.

Taken together, Monday’s actions reflect a Court grappling with two defining issues of the modern era: the limits of artificial intelligence in reshaping intellectual property law, and the constitutional boundaries of parental authority in public education. While the justices declined to redefine authorship in the age of machines, they signaled a willingness to intervene when parental rights and religious liberty claims are at stake.