Mexico’s Supreme Court rules that AI-generated works without human authorship are not eligible for copyright

In Amparo Directo 6/2025, the Mexican Supreme Court upheld the refusal by the Instituto Nacional de Derechos de Autor (INDAUTOR) to register the AI-generated image 'Avatar Virtual: Gerald Garcia Baez', which was created using the 'Leonardo' tool. The applicant claimed that he had provided photos and prompts and had even sought moral rights for the AI system.

 The Court confirmed that, under Mexico’s Federal Copyright Law, protection requires originality tied to human creative expression and authorship, including moral rights, which belong exclusively to natural persons (Articles 3, 12 and 18). 

The Court added that neither the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) nor the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works requires a different outcome. The USMCA refers to domestic law, and the Berne Convention presupposes human authors (for instance, by measuring the term of protection from the author’s lifetime). Therefore, AI systems cannot hold moral rights due to their personal and inalienable nature. In short, in Mexico, AI-generated content cannot be registered unless the applicant can demonstrate identifiable human authorship and creative contribution.