Artificial intelligence is not only being used as a supporting tool in the creative process, but highly sophisticated systems can also generate images, music, literary content and other expressive works with human involvement. This development has created a difficult question for copyright law, as the traditional framework is built on identifying an author whose creative choices can be linked to the resulting work. Yet, generative AI can produce outputs in circumstances where the extent of direct human contribution may be limited or difficult to establish.
Another issue arises in identifying the person who should be treated as its author and who may claim ownership of the copyright. These issues become more complex where an AI system produces the final expression autonomously, since recognising the system itself as an author would require the law to recognise an entity that has no independent legal personality, whereas attributing authorship to a human requires an assessment of the nature and extent of that person’s contribution to the creation of the specific work.
The Indian copyright law deals with computer-generated works under Section 2(d)(vi) of the Copyright Act, 1957, which provides that, in relation to a computer-generated literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, the author is “the person who causes the work to be created”. The provision was introduced long before the present generation of generative AI systems became relevant, but it now holds new importance as it offers a statutory basis for examining authorship where technology plays a considerable role in producing the work.
Against this background, the Indian Copyright Office considered these questions in an application for registration of the artistic work “A Recent Entrance to Paradise”, which identified the artificial intelligence system as the author and its creator as the owner. In its order dated 31 August 2026, the Registrar of Copyrights examined the originality of the AI-generated work, the meaning of authorship under Section 2(d)(vi), the relationship between authorship and ownership, and whether an AI system that has no legal personality can itself be entered as an author under the Copyright Act.
Background of the Application
The application was filed by Dr. Stephen L. Thaler (the applicant) for registration of copyright in the artistic work A Recent Entrance to Paradise, and it identified an artificial intelligence system known as “Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience” (DABUS) as the author of the work, with the applicant named as its owner.
According to the applicant, DABUS had been conceived, created and developed by the applicant, and it used interconnected artificial neural networks to generate the artwork through a multi-stage computational process. The final output was said to have been produced without real-time human intervention and without the use of a text prompt, but the material placed before the Copyright Office also showed that the applicant had designed and configured the system, provided photographs taken by him as visual inputs, curated linguistic material and supplied descriptions that helped establish associations between the visual and linguistic data.
The Copyright Office had to examine whether the work was original, whether DABUS could legally be treated as its author and whether the applicant could claim ownership despite naming the AI system as the author.
Originality of the AI-Generated Artwork
One of the most significant parts of the decision was that the Copyright Office did not reject the artwork merely because AI had been used to generate it. Under Section 13 of the Copyright Act, copyright subsists in original artistic works, and the Copyright Office referred to the standard laid down by the Supreme Court in Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak. Under that standard, originality does not require artistic novelty or a very high level of creativity, but the work must be independently created and must contain at least a minimum degree of creativity.
The Registrar accepted that ‘A Recent Entrance to Paradise’ crossed this threshold as the artwork contained a recognisable arrangement of colours, forms, tonal variations and spatial elements, and there was no material before the Office to show that it had been copied from an existing work.
This finding separated the question of originality from the question of authorship, and showed that an output generated through artificial intelligence may be original enough to qualify for copyright protection even if the AI system itself cannot be recognised as the legal author.
Author of a Computer-Generated Work
The central issue before the Copyright Office was the interpretation of Section 2(d)(vi) of the Copyright Act, which defines the author of a computer-generated literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work as “the person who causes the work to be created”.
The wording of this provision became central to the decision because the Parliament referred to the “person” who causes the work to be created, rather than the computer, software or technological system that produces the immediate output. The Office was therefore tasked to identify the legally recognised person whose actions resulted in the creation of the specific work.
However, the owner or developer of an AI system will not automatically become the author of every output produced by it, and the connection between that person and the creation of the individual work still needed to be examined. The Registrar explained that the relevant inquiry was directed towards identifying the person who can be regarded as the effective cause or principal architect of the work. These expressions were used only to explain the statutory test rather than to create separate legal requirements.
Based on the facts provided, the Registrar found that the applicant was capable of being treated as the person who caused the work to be created because they had developed and configured DABUS and had provided the inputs and conditions through which the artwork was produced. Therefore, the applicant was capable of being identified as the statutory author under Section 2(d)(vi).
Issues with DABUS as the Author
The applicant maintained that DABUS should remain identified as the author as the system had carried out the generative process that produced the final artwork. However, the Registrar rejected this position on the basis that DABUS is neither a natural person nor a juristic person recognised under Indian law.
DABUS has no independent legal personality and cannot hold property, exercise legal rights, enter into assignments or undertake legal obligations in its own name, so recognising it as an author would require the Copyright Office to give an AI system a legal status that the Copyright Act does not currently provide. The Registrar held that such a change could not be introduced through administrative interpretation, and any decision to extend legal personality or legal authorship to autonomous AI systems would require legislative intervention.
Issue with Authorship and Ownership
The application also raised a separate issue: DABUS was named as the author and the applicant as the owner, which did not fit easily within the ownership structure created by the Copyright Act.
Under Section 17 of the Copyright Act, the author is generally the first owner of copyright unless a statutory exception applies, and Sections 18 and 19 govern the assignment of copyright from one person to another. If DABUS were treated as the author, it would first need to be capable of owning copyright and would also need the legal capacity to transfer those rights to Dr. Thaler.
An AI system that has no legal personality cannot own copyright and cannot execute a valid assignment, and the Registrar also made it clear that ownership of an AI system does not automatically give its owner copyright in every work generated through that system. Therefore, the combination of DABUS as author and the applicant as owner was inconsistent with the existing statutory framework.
Rejection of Application
The Office gave the applicant an opportunity to amend the application and identify themself as the author under Section 2(d)(vi), but they did not make that amendment and continued to maintain that DABUS should be recognised as the author.
An alternative suggestion was also made under which the applicant could be identified as the author and DABUS could be mentioned separately as the technological system that generated the work, but the Registrar did not give a final ruling on whether such a neutral reference to an AI system could be permitted in a future case because no corrected application or properly framed independent request had been filed before the Office.
The application was ultimately rejected because it continued to identify DABUS as the author despite the opportunity to correct the authorship details. However, the Registrar also clarified that the rejection did not prevent the applicant from pursuing any remedy available under law on the basis of correctly identifying the author and the corresponding basis of ownership.
Effects of the Decision on AI-Generated Works in India
The decision should not be read as saying that every AI-generated work falls outside copyright protection. Instead, it accepts that an output generated through an AI system may satisfy the originality requirement. The difficulty may be in identifying the person who can legally claim authorship of that output, and under the present Copyright Act, authorship must still be attributed to a legally recognised person. For computer-generated works, Section 2(d)(vi) requires an examination of who caused the specific work to be created, and this may require looking at factors such as who designed the creative process, selected or supplied the inputs, configured the system and exercised sufficient responsibility over the creation of the work.
The order also makes it clear that there is no automatic rule under which the developer, programmer or owner of an AI system becomes the author of every output generated through it, because the analysis has to remain connected to the creation of the individual work. The decision shifts the discussion to whose actions were sufficiently connected to the creation of the work for that person to be treated as the author under the Copyright Act.
This distinction may gradually become important as AI tools become more deeply integrated into creative, professional, and commercial work, and the DABUS order provides a useful starting point for understanding how Indian copyright law may approach these questions under the present legal framework.
Authors: Manisha Singh and Shivi Gupta