The US Supreme Court has refused to hear Stephen Thaler's appeal, so lower-court rulings stand: an image his AI system DABUS produced with no human author cannot be registered for copyright.
The dispute began in 2018 over "A Recent Entrance to Paradise", which Thaler filed with the machine named as creator. The Copyright Office rejected it in 2022, a federal court in Washington agreed in 2023 and the DC Circuit did the same in 2025. His lawyers told the justices the issue was pressing for creative uses of AI.
The Decoder argues the refusal decides less than it seems. Thaler wanted the machine credited, not himself as a person using a tool, and he is tied to a campaign for AI-held patents that the court has also declined to take up. The real question, how much human input makes AI-assisted work protectable, was never before the court.
For now the Copyright Office's guidance fills that gap: prompts alone do not qualify, but substantial human additions, a creator's own material, or creative selection and arrangement can, and a film stays protected even with AI effects. A Munich court recently took a similar line on generic AI images, so the boundary remains open on both sides of the Atlantic.
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