The U.S. Supreme Court on March 2 declined to hear the first AI copyright case to reach its doors. The ruling in Thaler v. Perlmutter stands, and it’s exactly what you’d expect. Artwork generated entirely by an AI system, with no human creative involvement, cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law.
If you use AI tools to create book covers or marketing graphics, this affects you. But probably not in the way the headlines suggest.
What Happened
Computer scientist Stephen Thaler applied to register copyright for an image called “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” created by his AI system (the “Creativity Machine”). He listed the AI as the sole author and described the work as “created autonomously by machine” with no human creative contribution.
Bold strategy, honestly.
The U.S. Copyright Office rejected the application in 2018. A federal judge upheld the rejection in 2023, calling human authorship a “bedrock requirement of copyright.” The D.C. Circuit affirmed in 2025. And now the Supreme Court has declined to take up the case, ending Thaler’s legal road.
Why This Matters for Authors
The key phrase in all of this is “without human creative input.” Thaler specifically argued that his AI created the work entirely on its own. That’s what the courts rejected.
This is not a ruling about authors who use Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, or Canva to design book covers. When you write detailed prompts, select from generated options, and make editorial choices about the final image, you are providing human creative input. That’s a different legal question, and one the courts haven’t answered yet.
The Copyright Office has signaled (through its guidance on AI-assisted works) that the degree of human creative control matters. AI as a tool in human hands? Potentially protectable. AI as the sole creator? Nope.
What This Means in Practice
For most indie authors using AI art tools, the practical takeaway is pretty simple.
- Document your creative process. If you’re generating cover art with AI, keep records of your prompts, the choices you made, and any manual editing or compositing you did. This paper trail demonstrates human authorship.
- Don’t claim AI-only outputs as your own copyrighted work. If you type one prompt and use the raw output with zero creative selection or modification, you’re in the zone the courts just confirmed has no copyright protection.
- Keep watching. This ruling is narrow. It answers the easy question (can a machine be an author?) and leaves the harder one (how much human involvement is enough?) for future cases.
One More Thing
This decision doesn’t change anything about whether AI companies can use your existing copyrighted books to train their models. That’s a completely separate set of lawsuits. If you’re interested in that side of things, check out our coverage of the Anthropic settlement claims deadline.
Copyright law around AI-generated and AI-assisted creative work is still being figured out. This ruling answered one question. The rest? Still wide open.