Copyright Board Affirms Rejection of Purely Machine-Generated Text
Review Board upholds decision denying copyright registration to text generated entirely by AI prompts without human editing.
The US Copyright Office Review Board has issued a formal decision affirming the refusal to register a literary work created entirely through automated generative AI text prompts.
The applicant argued that selecting prompts and configuring AI model settings constituted sufficient human authorship.
Board Rationale
The Review Board rejected the argument, reiterating established judicial precedents:
"The Copyright Act protects only the fruits of intellectual labor that are founded in the creative powers of the human mind. Machine-generated text output lacks human authorship."
The ruling clarifies that while human authors may use AI tools during the creative process, the final registerable text must be the product of direct human writing or substantial human revision.
Sources
Ruth Kelleher
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