Copyright Developments

Only humans can be authors under the Copyright Act, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in a unanimous opinion on March 18, 2025.

The Court considered whether an artificial intelligence model could be an “author” of a work for copyright purposes – and answered “no.” In doing so, however, the court left open the crucial question of whether a human can be the “author” of an AI-generated work where he made and used the AI to generate the work.