Supreme Court Declines Case About Copyrights for Material Created by AI

A computer scientist argued the federal Copyright Act doesn’t require human authorship of a work.

Snow falls outside the Supreme Court in Washington on March 2, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on March 2 to take up a case dealing with whether art created by artificial intelligence (AI) may be copyrighted under U.S. law.

The justices denied the petition in Thaler v. Perlmutter in an unsigned order. The court did not explain its decision. No justices dissented. The respondent, Shira Perlmutter, is the U.S. Register of Copyrights.