Can AI-generated art be copyrighted? A US judge says not, but it’s just a matter of time

American copyright legislation currently invokes a human involvement' criterion. But judging by the way smartphones have trivialised the craft' of photography, something has to give

Evelyn Waugh famously held that taking a keen interest in ecclesiastical matters was often a prelude to insanity". Much the same might be said about newspaper columnists taking an interest in intellectual property law. But let us take the risk. After all, you only live once - at least until Elon Musk creates an electronic clone of himself.

On Friday 18 August, a federal judge in the US rejected an attempt to copyright an artwork that had been created by an AI. The work in question is, to the untrained eye at least, no great shakes. It is called A Recent Entrance into Paradise" and depicts a three-track railway heading into what appears to be a leafy, partly pixellated tunnel and had been autonomously created" by a computer algorithm called the Creativity Machine.