Artist sues after US rejects copyright for AI-generated image

Sept 26 (Reuters) - Artist Jason M. Allen asked a Colorado federal court on Thursday to reverse a U.S. Copyright Office decision that rejected copyright protection for an award-winning image he created with artificial intelligence.

Allen said in a lawsuit that he should receive a copyright for his image "Theatre D'opera Spatial" because it was an expression of his creativity.

A spokesperson for the Copyright Office declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Allen said in a statement that the office's decision "put me in a terrible position, with no recourse against others who are blatantly and repeatedly stealing my work."

Allen applied in 2022 for a copyright registration covering "Theatre D'opera Spatial," an image evoking a futuristic royal court that won the Colorado State Fair's art competition that year.

Allen told the office that he created the art with the generative AI system Midjourney by testing hundreds of prompt iterations, and altered it with Adobe Photoshop. The office rejected Allen's application after he refused to disclaim the parts of the image that Midjourney generated.

A Copyright Office tribunal affirmed the decision last year, finding the image as a whole was not copyrightable because it contained more than a minimal amount of AI-created material.

The office has previously rescinded copyrights for images that artist Kris Kashtanova created using Midjourney. It also rejected a copyright application for an image that computer scientist Stephen Thaler said his AI system created autonomously. Thaler has since appealed.

Allen told the Colorado court on Thursday that the office was wrong to find that his work was not the product of human authorship.

"Mr. Allen had a specific artistic idea, conceived of in his mind, and he used Midjourney as a tool to create an artistic expression of that idea," the lawsuit said. "Such creative input is on par with that expressed by other types of artists and is capable of copyright protection."

The case is Allen v. Perlmutter, U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, No. 1:24-cv-02665.