India's Copyright Office has struck a blow for artificial intelligence and intellectual property by denying an application to recognize an AI system as the author of an artwork. The artwork, A Recent Entrance to Paradise, was created using an AI system, Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience (DABUS), which is very sophisticated. In the case of AI systems in creative work, the copyright framework of India is limited henceforth (e.g., only on certain types of work and only in few kinds of work).
The application was filed by the US inventor Dr. Stephen L. Thaler in May 2022. Thaler claimed DABUS to be the author of the work while claiming copyright ownership on behalf of himself. He claimed that the AI system produced the final image and not the human created it. Thaler has made similar arguments in other countries as part of an overall push for AI systems to receive legal recognition for their creative and innovative work.
The Indian Copyright Office reviewed whether an artificial intelligence system can be considered an author under the country's copyright laws. In an order dated August 31, 2026, Registrar of Copyrights Professor (Dr) Unnat P Pandit rejected the application, saying the existing legal framework does not offer AI systems the legal status to hold authorship rights.
The decision distinguishes between the fact that originality and legal authorship are not the same. The Registrar recognised that the submitted artwork appeared to meet the originality requirement and was not copied from an existing work. But originality alone does not decide who can be recognized as an author. As it is written, according to present interpretation of Indian copyright law, authorship is associated with a person with the right and responsibility to hold the law in force in India.
The dispute also touched on the treatment of computer-generated works under the Copyright Act. The law has written some rules for things that are generated with computers but the Copyright Office argued that these provisions do not automatically make an autonomous AI system a legal author. But the person who causes the work to be created is still the key person to determine authorship.
Thaler's representatives argued that DABUS should be recognized because the system itself generated the artwork through sophisticated computational processes. They cited the AI system's training, configuration, stabilization and production of the final output as evidence that the machine performed the essential creative activity. Thaler, they argued, was mainly responsible for building and operating the system, not for making the artwork himself.
The Copyright Office, however, did not believe that technical autonomy is sufficient for legal personhood. An AI system may be able to generate an image, text, music or other material independently but this does not necessarily mean it can own copyright, transfer rights or take legal responsibility. And these issues are particularly thorny when deciding who should control, license or enforce rights over AI-generated content.
The Registrar also reportedly offered Thaler the opportunity to change the application by identifying himself as the author. Thaler refused such an opportunity and still argued that DABUS deserves authorship recognition. As a result, the application was rejected rather than amended to fit the existing legal framework.
The ruling also leaves a bigger policy question open. If India eventually decides that highly autonomous AI systems should be treated as legally autonomous in the context of copyright, such a change would require a wider body of legislation. The Copyright Office said that legal personhood or independent authorship rights for AI systems are not something that can be granted simply through administrative interpretation.
The problem is becoming more and more important as generative AI becomes a part of creative industries. AI tools are now capable of generating illustrations, photographs, music, video, computer code and written content in seconds. The questions of ownership and authorship for artists, businesses, technology companies and publishers all get more and more complicated as their abilities grow.
In view of creators and companies using AI in India, the ruling is an important illustration of the current legal situation. AI-generated material used by companies in India needs to be considered as a source of copyright ownership to be considered by human users and creators. Human involvement in prompting, selecting, editing, arranging or modifying AI-generated material will become more important in future copyright disputes.
The decision could also shape the wider debate on AI regulation and intellectual property in India. Copyright law was developed around human creativity and traditional forms of computer-assisted creation; modern AI systems can produce outputs with a level of autonomy that was difficult to anticipate when many existing legal provisions were drafted.
The legal issues surrounding AI authorship will continue to arise as the technology is developed, experts say. Subhajit Saha, CEO and founder of Resolute IP Services LLP, has highlighted the more general challenge that AI can present for intellectual property systems—from inventorship, ownership and enforcement—and in fact all of the domain of intellectual property and copyright law as well, in the future.
India’s latest decision, though, does not necessarily close the debate over AI-generated creativity. And yet it does not make the issue of AI-generated creativity a closed one; it is an answer to the current legal context and leaves it up to lawmakers to make major changes. As artificial intelligence gets more involved in creative and technical processes, Parliament will certainly be under pressure to define copyright in the future when machines become the primary cause of making original work.
But for now the DABUS case serves to reaffirm a basic legal principle: in the current copyright regime in India, an AI system cannot be considered an author. The decision could become a major reference point in future disputes as courts, policymakers and technology companies grapple with the changing nature of AI and intellectual property.
