Can AI-generated inventions be patented? A Tokyo court says no.

A Tokyo court on Thursday ruled against granting patents to inventions generated by artificial intelligence in a dispute over whether AI -- not human beings -- can be recognized as an inventor. The ruling comes amid ongoing debates on how to regulate generative AI and is part of a transnational class action lawsuit launched by Ryan Abbott, a law and health science professor at the University of Surrey in England. The plaintiff filed for a patent in 2021 for a device generated by AI, listing the inventor's name as "DABUS, an artificial intelligence that autonomously invented this invention." Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience (DABUS) is an AI system developed by Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist and president of Imagination Engines, an AI technology company.