Can an AI System be Registered as the “Author” of a Copyrighted Work under the Indian Law?
Transcript:
Can an AI System be Registered as the “Author” of a Copyrighted Work under the Indian Law?
On 31 August 2026, in the matter of DABUS v. Registrar of Copyrights, the Copyright Office examined this question through an application seeking copyright registration for the artistic work "A Recent Entrance to Paradise", with authorship attributed not to a human being, but to an artificial intelligence system called DABUS.
Dr. Stephen Thaler, a scientist based in the United States, developed an AI system called DABUS. He supplied it with photographs he had personally taken, along with curated textual material. DABUS then generated a painting, titled "A Recent Entrance to Paradise", entirely on its own, with no prompt and no human intervention at the final stage.
Dr. Stephen didn't seek registration in his own name. He applied with DABUS listed as the "author," and sought to be recorded only as the owner.
Four questions arose:
Is the work "original"?
Who actually "authored" it?
Can Thaler own a work he didn't author?
Can DABUS just be named the "generator," without being called author?
Here's where it gets interesting. On originality, the Registrar sided with Thaler. Relying on the Supreme Court precedents, the Registrar held that copyright only needs a minimal degree of creativity, not novelty or human genius. Since the work wasn't copied from anything pre-existing, it passed.
But passing the originality test did not mean DABUS could be the author.
For authorship, the Registrar applied the "mastermind test." The legal author isn't whoever performs the final act of creation, it's whoever conceives the work and controls the process from the outset.
On Dr. Stephen’s own account, he conceived the system, supplied the inputs, and curated the material. That made Dr. Stephen, not DABUS, the "person who caused the work to be created." DABUS couldn't be author, because it isn't a legal person at all. Hence, the application was rejected by the Indian Copyright Office.
A work made using AI can be original. But originality alone doesn't decide who the author is. Indian law still wants a human "mastermind" behind every authorship claim, so if you're creating with AI, claim authorship yourself, and be ready to show how you directed the process.
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Ms. Kritika Krishnamurthy
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