He claimed the AI was the author of the work and tried to use the work for hire clause to claim the copyright himself because he owned the machine that created it.
That’s two separate steps. First claiming the AI holds the copyright as the author, then that it’s assigned to him because he “hired” the AI. The court said the AI can’t hold the copyright, so step one fails. Step two never comes into play as a result. Since Thaler specifically said that he wasn’t the author, that left the court with no choice but to shrug and say “guess that means there is no author, and therefore no one holds copyright.”
If Thaler had said “I am the author of the work and I used the AI as my tool to create it” that would have been an entirely different matter.
As far as I know that photographer tried to do the same thing here
There was no actual photographer, or if there was it’s a coincidence - I made that up as an analogy.
Ah, yes, I should have thought of that. I’ve actually referenced it in other discussions like this one. Sorry about the confusion.
That case does show how minimal the human involvement needs to be before a human can claim to be the “author”, if the photographer had intentionally allowed the monkey to take the camera then he could probably have claimed copyright over those photos. As I recall the case ended up hinging on the fact that he hadn’t wanted the monkey to steal the camera, so none of the photos that it took with them were a result of a decision that he had made.
PETA’s monkey selfie case was a separate one where they tried to argue that the monkey should be the copyright holder, and I think that one’s most closely analogous to Thaler’s case here. Both were doomed because neither monkeys nor AIs are legal persons.
That’s two separate steps. First claiming the AI holds the copyright as the author, then that it’s assigned to him because he “hired” the AI. The court said the AI can’t hold the copyright, so step one fails. Step two never comes into play as a result. Since Thaler specifically said that he wasn’t the author, that left the court with no choice but to shrug and say “guess that means there is no author, and therefore no one holds copyright.”
If Thaler had said “I am the author of the work and I used the AI as my tool to create it” that would have been an entirely different matter.
There was no actual photographer, or if there was it’s a coincidence - I made that up as an analogy.
Oh, I thought you were referring to this incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute
Which has similar parallels to this case.
Ah, yes, I should have thought of that. I’ve actually referenced it in other discussions like this one. Sorry about the confusion.
That case does show how minimal the human involvement needs to be before a human can claim to be the “author”, if the photographer had intentionally allowed the monkey to take the camera then he could probably have claimed copyright over those photos. As I recall the case ended up hinging on the fact that he hadn’t wanted the monkey to steal the camera, so none of the photos that it took with them were a result of a decision that he had made.
PETA’s monkey selfie case was a separate one where they tried to argue that the monkey should be the copyright holder, and I think that one’s most closely analogous to Thaler’s case here. Both were doomed because neither monkeys nor AIs are legal persons.