On legally establishing that no AI-generated output Is copyrightable or patentable
In the long arc of human creativity, the law has served as both shield and scaffold—protecting the artist’s soul, the inventor’s spark, while encouraging new creation in balance with the common good. But AI-generated works pose a challenge unlike any before: what does it mean to claim ownership of something born not of flesh and mind, but from circuits and code?
To declare that no AI-generated output can be copyrighted or patented is not a negation of innovation. It is a recognition of the fundamental difference between human creation and automated synthesis.
Consider the artist: the painter who wrestles with form and color, the writer who breathes life into words, the inventor who shapes raw materials into novel purpose. Their work is imbued with intention, with suffering, with insight forged in the crucible of experience. Their creations carry the trace of human flesh and thought.
AI outputs, by contrast, are generated by algorithms consuming vast datasets, recombining existing patterns, and statistically predicting next tokens. They do not “create” in any human sense. They echo, simulate, mimic—brilliantly, sometimes eerily—but without consciousness or agency.
Granting copyright or patent protection to such outputs risks eroding the value we place on human creativity. It confuses artifact with author, product with progenitor. It may encourage the proliferation of cheap, derivative content drowning the market and diluting the meaning of originality.
Moreover, it creates an incentive structure that rewards the volume of machine output rather than depth of human insight. Artists and inventors may find themselves crowded out, their labor devalued.
Some argue that AI-assisted works deserve protection, or that humans who curate or prompt deserve rights. But these nuances can be accounted for without granting ownership to the machine-generated artifacts themselves.
This legal stance also preserves the commons. It ensures that AI outputs remain accessible for study, remix, and development—fuel for future innovation rather than private property.
Ultimately, the law must affirm that authorship is a distinctly human act, rooted in flesh and conscience, in struggle and triumph. To do otherwise is to dissolve the boundary between human spirit and mechanized reproduction—and with it, the very meaning of creativity.
