AI can write a book, but can it own it? India's Copyright Office says no

In a new order, India's Copyright Office has rejected an application where an AI system, DABUS, was named as an author. The order says that while AI can create original work, the Indian copyright laws do not have the provision to recognise it as an author.India's Copyright Office says that while AI can create original work, it cannot be recognised as an author. (Photo: Reuters)AI tools today can write stories or create images and videos. But who owns this AI-generated content? If you create something with an AI model, do you own its rights? Or does it belong to the model itself? India’s Copyright Office has now shared a first-of-its-kind order, rejecting an application where an AI system, DABUS, was named as its author.In an order dated August 31, 2026, Registrar of Copyrights Prof Unnat P Pandit said the work, “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” met the originality requirements under Section 13 of the Copyright Act. But DABUS could not be accepted as an author because it is neither a natural person nor a juristic person recognised by law.The application was filed on May 3, 2022 by US inventor Dr Stephen L Thaler. He described the work as an artistic work first published in the US in 2016, named DABUS, or Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience, as the author, and claimed copyright ownership for himself.Copyright Office cites Indian law in rejection of AI as authorThe office said the key issue under Section 2(d)(vi) was not which system produced the final output, but who was "the person who causes the work to be created.” The Copyright Office raised questions on both authorship and ownership. It asked how an AI system could meet the requirement of Section 2(d)(vi), and how copyright could vest in Thaler if the named author had no legal capacity to own or transfer rights.Thaler's representatives stated that DABUS had generated the image autonomously through neural-network processes such as training, association formation, perturbation, monitoring, stabilisation and output generation, while Thaler's role was confined to designing, configuring and training the system. The Registrar, however, said originality and authorship were separate issues. The order noted that there was no clear material to show the artwork had been copied from any identified earlier work The arrangement of visual forms, colours, tonal variations, spatial relationships and compositional elements crossed the "minimal degree of expressive creativity" required under Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, as per the order.But the finding did not answer the issue of authorship. Based on the material before the office, it held that Thaler had conceived and created DABUS, configured how it operated, supplied the visual and linguistic inputs, connected them through descriptions, and started the process that resulted in the specific work.DABUS, it said, carried out the immediate computational exercise, but that did not make it the statutory author."The fact that a system operates autonomously after being configured does not alter the identity of the person responsible for bringing the work into existence. Autonomy in execution is not synonymous with conception of a work,” the office said.The order added that recognising AI as an author is a matter that may be decided by the Indian Parliament."Whether legal personhood or authorship should ever be extended to autonomous artificial intelligence remains a policy decision strictly reserved for Parliament, and cannot be introduced via administrative reinterpretation,” the office explained.The ruling does not say that AI-generated expressions cannot receive copyright protection in all cases. It says such a work may still be original, but the legal status of the author must rest with a person recognised by law who caused the work to be created.In the past, Thaler has filed similar patents in other countries, including the US and the UK. In most cases, a similar legal person requirement blocked the copyright or patent for DABUS. Though the AI system did get a patent granted in South Africa in 2021.- EndsPublished By: Armaan AgarwalPublished On: Sep 2, 2026 13:19 IST