In this era of ever-increasing concern over the risks to human society associated with artificial intelligence, a recent copyright decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia offers a refreshingly satisfying victory for humans over machines.

In that case, the plaintiff-owner of a computer system he calls the “Creativity Machine” sought to register for copyright a piece of visual art that his machine created. His application for copyright identified the author as the Creativity Machine and explained that the work had been “autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on the machine.” The Register of Copyrights rejected the copyright claim explaining that copyright law is limited to “original intellectual conceptions of the author” and copyright registration will be denied if it is determined that “a human being did not create the work.” Upon review, the review board agreed that copyright protection does not extend to the creations of non-human entities.