Artist Challenges Copyright Office Refusal to Register Award-Winning AI-Assisted Work

The Office first tackled the registrability of AI-assisted works in its Kashtanova decision, canceling a previously issued registration of a graphic novel titled Zarya of the Dawn when it learned that the images in the novel were generated using Midjourney, an AI tool that creates images in response to user prompts. Kashtanova detailed to the Office her "creative, iterative process" for generating the images, including "multiple rounds of composition, selection, arrangement, cropping, and editing for each image in the Work." The Office determined, however, that while Kashtanova's textual authorship and selection, coordination, and arrangement of the novel's written and visual elements were eligible for protection, the images themselves were not the product of human authorship and therefore not copyrightable.