"AI Could Have Made It" Defense Rejected: Federal Court Rules AI Availability Does Not Demolish Copyright Protection for Human Works
On May 14, 2026, in Vedros v. Sterling Group of the Twin Tiers, Inc. (No. 4:24-CV-02183, M.D. Pa.), Chief Judge Matthew W. Brann of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued a highly significant ruling rejecting a novel and potentially disruptive intellectual property defense. The court ruled that copyright defendants cannot escape liability or argue a lack of market harm by claiming that a human-created copyrighted work lacks value because artificial intelligence could hypothetically have generated a similar work.
This is the first known federal ruling to directly address and reject this "AI could have made it" argument, establishing a critical precedent that protects human creators from having their copyrights devalued by the mere existence of generative AI tools.
Case Background: Unauthorized Commercial Use
The plaintiff, Nick Vedros, is a professional commercial photographer known for his creative, humorous animal photography. He brought a copyright infringement claim against Sterling Group of the Twin Tiers, Inc., a puppy breeding and sales company, after they copied his copyrighted photograph of a dog on a scale (with a cat looking on) and used it as the header image for a blog post on their website titled "A Breeder's Note on Canine Obesity."
Sterling Group did not dispute that they copied the photo without authorization. Instead, they raised a fair use affirmative defense under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
The Novel "AI Devaluation" Argument
In analyzing the fourth fair use factor—the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work—the defendant advanced a novel argument. They contended that because a similar image could easily and cheaply be generated using modern generative AI tools, the plaintiff's original human-created photograph possessed no meaningful commercial market value. Therefore, they argued, their unauthorized copying of the image could not cause any cognizable market harm.
The Court's Resounding Rejection
Chief Judge Brann rejected this argument as "absurd." The court pointed out that the defendant could have easily taken their own photo of their own bred dogs rather than stealing the plaintiff's work.
Taking the defendant’s logic to its ultimate conclusion, the court noted that if the availability of technology to recreate a work stripped the original of its copyright value, then almost no creative work would be protected. A talented sculptor could recreate Michelangelo's "David," and a painter could recreate the "Mona Lisa," but that does not strip the originals of their legal protections. The court granted summary judgment in favor of the photographer on both the infringement claim and the fair use defense.
Implications for IP and Risk Teams
For enterprise legal and IP teams, Vedros provides vital clarity and reassurance:
- Generative AI is Not a Fair Use Shield: Companies cannot justify scraping or using human-created copyrighted images, text, or music by arguing that "we could have just generated this with AI anyway." If a company chooses to use a copyrighted human work, they must license it.
- Preserving Human Copyright Value: The ruling prevents the wholesale devaluation of human-created content portfolios in the era of generative AI. Human creativity remains fully protected under traditional copyright principles, and the theoretical ease of AI replication does not diminish the legal damages or market harm of actual infringement.
- Clear Compliance Mandate: Compliance and marketing teams must ensure that all media used in corporate communications, blogs, and advertising is either properly licensed, original, or actually generated from scratch using cleared AI tools—not copied from human creators under the assumption that AI has made human content "valueless."
Verbatim Quotes
"But why stop there? Defendant could have also taken its own photograph of a dog on a scale with the very dogs it breeds. Perhaps Defendant could also sculpt Michaelangelo's David, or re-paint the Mona Lisa, depending on Defendant's talent. Under Defendant's logic, the only works entitled to protection would be those which no machine or human could recreate. This argument cannot stand. The case that Defendant cites for this absurd proposition, Thaler v. Perlmutter, provides no such support."