The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be eligible to receive a copyright.

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration had urged the Supreme Court not to hear Thaler's appeal.

The Copyright Office has ​separately rejected bids by artists for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney. Those artists argued that ​they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance - unlike Thaler, who said his system created "A Recent ‌Entrance to ⁠Paradise" independently.