Question

Can a machine be an author?

It starts in art, with Portrait of Edmond de Belamy (2018).

1 · Art
Portrait of Edmond de Belamy
This work raises the question.
2 · Philosophy · anticipates
Lovelace’s Note G
A century and a half before the auction, Lovelace wrote that a machine does not originate. The sale tests whether a room of buyers will ignore that sentence if the picture is good.
3 · Philosophy · echoes
The imitation game
Turing taught people to score the performance and drop the question of what is inside. A portrait that sells is that score, with a price.
4 · Art · echoes
Unsupervised
MoMA later hung a model trained on its own collection and credited the artist who directed it. The museum answered in public the question the auction only priced.
5 · Law
Thaler v. Perlmutter
The law’s current answer.

Where the law stands

Decided

A machine cannot be the author of a copyrighted work. The D.C. Circuit said the Copyright Act requires a human author. The ruling covers a form that named no human. It does not say a person who uses a model can never register the parts they made. On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in No. 25-449, so the D.C. Circuit’s ruling stands. A denial of certiorari is not an opinion of the Court, and it does not settle AI-assisted work where a person did contribute.

What changed

2018-10-25 · No law yet. The Belamy sale makes the question public. No authorship ruling is attached to it.
2019 · No law yet. The Copyright Office refuses Thaler’s application naming the Creativity Machine as author.
2025-03-18 · Decided. The D.C. Circuit affirms. A non-human cannot be the author.
2026-03-02 · Decided. The Supreme Court denies certiorari in No. 25-449. The D.C. Circuit’s ruling stands.

Sources

The connection sentences were drafted with AI for this edition and kept only where a source is named.