"The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled that AI software cannot be a registered inventor of a US patent, Reuters reports, though the issue could be subject to further appeal."

"The legal challenge came from Dr. Stephen Thaler, who filed two patent applications naming an AI program called ""DABUS"" as the inventor in 2019."

"In response, the court ruled that an inventor must be a ""natural person."""

"The key rationale for the recent denial stems from the definition of ""inventor"" in the Patent Act, which states the inventor must be an ""individual."" The Court of Appeals cited the Supreme Court as defining an ""individual"" as a human being, according to Reuters. That rules out machines, animals, and software such as Thaler's ""DABUS"" as being defined as the inventor of a US patent."

"It's important to point out that in Thaler's 2019 copyright case, the US Copyright Office took issue with an AI owning the copyright instead of a human."

"As Reuters explains, ""If AI is used as a tool to invent, then, like traditional inventions, the use of tools to carry out an invention does not bar an applicant's claim of inventorship."""

"But if the role of AI rises to the level of inventor, the invention cannot receive patent protection, as it stands under the most recent ruling."

"On Tuesday, the US Copyright Office declared that images created using the AI-powered Midjourney image generator for the comic book Zarya of the Dawn should not have been granted copyright protection, and the images' copyright protection will be revoked."

"""That authorship is protected by copyright. However, as discussed below, the images in the Work that were generated by the Midjourney technology are not the product of human authorship."""

"That argument wasn't good enough for the Copyright Office, which describes in detail why it believes AI-generated artwork should not be granted copyright protection."

"See COMPENDIUM (THIRD ) § 313.2 (explaining that “the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author”)."

"Though she claims to have “guided” the structure and content of each image, the process described in the Kashtanova Letter makes clear that it was Midjourney—not Kashtanova—that originated the “traditional elements of authorship” in the images."

"Despite precedents for earlier algorithmically generated artwork receiving copyright protection, this ruling means that AI-generated imagery, without human-authored elements, cannot currently be copyrighted in the United States."