The ruling raised an important question: Was the issue just that Thaler should have listed himself, rather than his AI system, as the image’s creator?

Then on September 5, the office rejected the copyright for Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, holding that it “was not the product of human authorship” because it had been created by the AI software Midjourney.

The nation’s highest court acknowledged that “ordinary” photographs may not merit copyright protection because they may be a “mere mechanical reproduction” of some scene.

So even though a mechanical process captured the image, it nevertheless reflected creative choices by the photographer, and therefore deserved copyright protection.

Or consider the time an Associated Press photographer, Mannie Garcia, snapped a photo of then-Sen. Barack Obama listening to George Clooney during a 2006 panel discussion.

Two years later, artist Shepard Fairey used Garcia’s photo as the basis for an illustration called “Obama Hope” that was ubiquitous during the 2008 presidential campaign.

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