The U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) has issued guidance clarifying that material created solely by artificial intelligence (A.I.) cannot be copyrighted. Under the new rule, though applicants may claim a copyright for an arrangement or editing of such material, the original work is ineligible. "In these cases, copyright will only protect the human-authored aspects of the work, which are 'independent of' and do 'not affect' the copyright status of the AI-generated material itself," the USCO says.
The USCO's new rule closely follows the agency's decision to revoke a copyright granted to artist Kristina Kashtanova for A.I.-generated images in a graphic novel, reported by Reason's Joe Lancaster. Kashtanova retains copyright privileges over the work's text and the arrangement of the images, though not over the images themselves.
