Technology

ITT: people misunderstanding the issue being ruled on (or rather, not being ruled on by letting the lower court decision stand).

If he had applied for copyright over the image generated using "AI" as a tool, it (edit: probably^2^) would have been granted, with him listed as the human author. But that's not what he wanted. He's apparently Hell-bent on trying to get the work registered in the name of the "AI" system itself as the author, to so that he can claim that the government recognized the "AI" as a sentient being that can own property hold a copyright^1^ on its own behalf.

This is not the broad ruling against AI slop copyrightability that people think it is. It's a ruling against "AI" personhood.

(^1^ Copyright isn't a property right, BTW)

(^2^ He explicitly claimed he gave no creative contribution and that the work was created completely autonomously, and the court's ruling included excluding that from being copyrightable. It is if he hadn't done that -- if he had claimed he had directed it via prompts or whatever -- that I think they would have granted the copyright to him as the human author. It turns out that he changed his mind and did make that argument on appeal, but the court explicitly ignored and did not rule on it because it wasn't raised in his initial complaint.)