Those who have spent any time in writing and author groups know that it’s no easy matter to write a book — with or without artificial intelligence. Even if you’re AI-savvy, you can’t just pop in a prompt and have ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini spit out a fully formed novel.
There are no easy shortcuts.
And yet, nearly every day we get queries from first-time authors asking if Marlowe, the fiction-loving AI created by Authors A.I., will write or rewrite their novel. The answer is no, because we believe authors should always remain at the heart of the creative process.
But some authors have begun using A.I. to write large chunks of their work, using tools like Sudowrite and NovelAI to write entire chapters — sometimes the whole thing. Every author can make that decision for himself or herself.
There’s a wrinkle, though, that AI writing sites won’t tell you about: If you use AI to write your novel, you can’t copyright it under U.S. copyright law.
Now comes another court ruling that confirms a non-human machine cannot be an author under the U.S. Copyright Act.
Can a machine be considered an author?
In a significant decision for the future of AI-generated content, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week in Thaler v. Perlmutter that a non-human machine cannot be considered an “author” under U.S. copyright law. Dr. Stephen Thaler, the plaintiff, had attempted to register a copyright for an image called “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” which he claimed was created entirely by an artificial intelligence system he developed, known as the Creativity Machine. The U.S. Copyright Office rejected the application, stating that works must be created by a human to qualify for copyright protection. Thaler sued, arguing that AI-generated works should be copyrightable—and that he, as the owner of the AI, should hold the copyright.
The court rejected that argument, affirming that authorship under the Copyright Act requires human creativity, a principle that has long been embedded in case law and legislative history. The judges emphasized that copyright law is rooted in promoting the “progress of science and useful arts,” which historically presumes a human creator. The ruling echoed the Copyright Office’s guidance that while AI-assisted works may receive copyright protection if there’s sufficient human input, fully autonomous AI creations are not eligible.
Importantly, the court sidestepped broader philosophical questions about machine creativity or future possibilities, focusing instead on a strict reading of the current statute. It acknowledged that Congress, not the courts, would need to change the law if society wanted to extend copyright protection to non-human authors in the future.
This ruling is part of a growing body of legal decisions resisting attempts to assign legal authorship or inventorship to AI systems, despite the increasing sophistication of generative models. While Thaler has pushed similar arguments in international patent and copyright cases (often under his AI DABUS), this latest U.S. ruling continues to reinforce the idea that, in the eyes of the law, only humans can be authors — at least for now.
It’s a position that reflects our company’s own ethos that authorship is an endeavor best left to authors.
And while we encourage debut and veteran authors to experiment with A.I. to their heart’s content and to use it for research, scene ideas, outlining and more, authors need to understand that they lose one of their fundamental rights — copyright — if they rely on the machine not just to help but to do the bulk of the work in crafting a novel.
So the next time you’re plugging away on your first, second or third draft, take some solace in the fact that you’ll be able to own that IP when you finally type “THE END.”
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