Hyderabad: Who owns the copyright on a piece of artwork made by artificial intelligence (AI)? The human who gave the prompts or the AI system that executed it?
The application was filed on May 3, 2022, by US inventor Dr Stephen L Thaler, describing the work as an artistic work first published in the United States in 2016.
The copyright office objected to the application, asking how an AI system could satisfy Section 2(d)(vi) of the Copyright Act, which defines the author of a computer-generated work as “the person who causes the work to be created”. Rejecting the application, the Registrar said any extension of legal personhood or authorship to autonomous AI systems is a matter for Parliament to decide and cannot be done through administrative reinterpretation of the Copyright Act. In a first-of-its-kind ruling on artificial intelligence and copyright, India’s copyright office has rejected an application seeking to register an artwork with an AI system, DABUS, listed as its author. Thaler named ‘Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience’ — DABUS — as the author, while claiming ownership of the copyright himself. It also questioned how ownership could vest in Thaler if DABUS, the named author, had no legal capacity to own or assign copyright. The order noted that Thaler was given an opportunity to amend the application by naming himself as the author, but he declined and maintained that DABUS should be recognised.