The concept of creating a machine is not new. However, the art market has recently become obsessed with works produced by artificial intelligence. One of them, entitled “Portrait of Edmond de Bellamy,” was sold at Christie’s in 2018 for even US $ 432,500. This painting was created by a machine that mimics the human intellect trained by the French group Obvious in more than 15,000 portraits painted during the paintings of the Middle Ages and the 20th century.
But can artificial intelligence be an artist in itself? Not for the US authorities. The US Copyright Review Board recently decided that a work of art must necessarily be a product of the human mind to be copyrighted. This decision is based on a request from Stephen L. Thaler, President, and CEO of Imagination Engines, Inc.
Scientists launched administrative litigation in 2018, attributed copyright to “the recent gateway to paradise” and to the artificial intelligence he invented. According to official documents, Stephen L. Thaler claims that this work was “autonomously created by computer algorithms running on the machine” without human intervention.
Bringing machines closer to humans
However, the US Copyright Review Board has refused to copyright this artificial intelligence as “a recent gateway to paradise.” The organization claims that this would violate the basic principles of copyright law and states that all creations must be the product of the human mind. Thaler needs to prove that the work is human or persuade the office to deviate from the copyright law of the first century. He didn’t do either.
