United States of America: US Copyright Office rejects reconsideration request of copyright for artificial intelligence system

On 30 March 2020, the US Copyright Office rejected for the second time a copyright claim for a work generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) system. The AI-generated work, submitted by Dr. Thaler, had previously been denied registration by the US Copyright Office because of a "lack of human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim". Dr. Thaler consequently requested the Office to reconsider its refusal to register the artwork, arguing that “the human authorship requirement is unconstitutional and unsupported by either statute or case law". This claim proved unsuccessful and the second application was rejected by the US Copyright Office, using the interpretation of the Copyright Act, stating that a work only meets the legal and formal requirements of copyright protection if it is created by a human author.