No one owns the monkey selfie photographs at the center of the copyright case that David Slater and PETA fought over for years. A crested macaque named Naruto pressed the shutter on Slater’s camera in Indonesia in 2011, and because U.S. copyright law protects only works created by human beings, neither the photographer nor the monkey holds any rights in the images. A federal appeals court confirmed in 2018 that an animal cannot sue for copyright infringement, and the photos now sit permanently in the public domain.
How a Macaque Ended Up Behind the Camera
Slater, a British wildlife photographer, traveled to Sulawesi to photograph crested macaques in their habitat. During the shoot, a macaque later identified as Naruto picked up his camera and triggered the shutter repeatedly, producing several sharp, well-framed self-portraits. Slater argued he deserved copyright because he chose the location, brought the equipment, and set up the conditions for the photos. PETA argued the opposite: the monkey pressed the button, so the monkey owned the images. Neither position survived contact with U.S. copyright law.
Why the Photos Cannot Be Copyrighted
Federal copyright law protects “original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression.”1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 102 – Subject Matter of Copyright: In General The statute does not define authorship, but the Copyright Office has long read it to require a human creator. Section 313.2 of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices states that the Office “will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants,” and it specifically lists “a photograph taken by a monkey” as an example of an unregistrable work.2U.S. Copyright Office. Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices – Copyrightable Authorship: What Can Be Registered
Setting up the conditions for a photo is not the same as taking it. Slater chose the jungle, the camera, and the lens, but the macaque chose the moment, the angle, and the expression. Because Slater did not personally trigger the shutter, the Copyright Office would not treat him as the author either. That leaves the image without an eligible author of any kind.
What the Ninth Circuit Decided in Naruto v. Slater
PETA sued Slater in 2015 on Naruto’s behalf, claiming Slater infringed the monkey’s copyright by publishing and selling the images. The case reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled in 2018 that Naruto lacked statutory standing to bring a copyright claim. While the Copyright Act does not use the word “human” in defining an author, nothing in the statute grants animals the right to file infringement suits.3United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Naruto v. Slater
The court applied what is sometimes called the plain statement rule: if Congress had intended to let animals sue, it would have said so explicitly. The opinion also noted that the Copyright Act refers to an author’s “children,” “widow,” and “widower,” and allows heirs to inherit certain rights. Those terms assume a human family structure. The panel was unanimous on the standing question.3United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Naruto v. Slater
The Settlement and Where It Left Slater
Before the Ninth Circuit issued its opinion, PETA and Slater reached a settlement. Slater agreed to donate 25 percent of any future revenue from the monkey selfie photographs to organizations that protect crested macaque habitats in Indonesia. The court ruled on the standing question anyway, which is unusual for a settled case but reflected the importance of the legal issue. Slater was left committed to sharing income from images he did not actually own, on a legal record confirming that no one did.
What Public Domain Status Means for the Photos
Because no one holds a valid copyright in the images, they sit in the public domain. Anyone can reproduce, distribute, modify, or sell them without permission or payment. There are no cease-and-desist letters to send, no licensing fees to collect, and no infringement damages to pursue. The photos will stay in the public domain permanently. Unlike works whose copyrights expire on a schedule, these images never had protection to begin with, so no future date changes the analysis.
Why the Case Still Matters for AI-Generated Work
The principle at the heart of the monkey selfie dispute, that copyright demands a human author, is now the central question in fights over AI-generated content. The Copyright Office applies the same rule to deny registration for works created entirely by machines.2U.S. Copyright Office. Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices – Copyrightable Authorship: What Can Be Registered The Compendium groups machine-produced output alongside animal-produced output: if the “traditional elements of authorship” were “conceived and executed not by man but by a machine,” registration is refused.
In 2025, the D.C. Circuit affirmed this principle in Thaler v. Perlmutter, holding that an AI system called the Creativity Machine could not be recognized as an author because the Copyright Act “requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being.”4United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Thaler v. Perlmutter Swap the macaque for a neural network and the reasoning is the same.
When a Human Uses AI as a Tool
The analysis gets more complicated when a human uses AI as a tool rather than handing over the whole creative act. In March 2023, the Copyright Office published registration guidance for works that blend human and AI contributions. If a work contains more than a trivial amount of AI-generated material, the applicant must disclose that fact and describe what the human author actually created. Copyright then covers only the human-authored portions, not the AI output.5Federal Register. Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence
The Office has been clear about where the line falls. Typing prompts into an AI image generator, even detailed prompts, does not make you the author of what comes out. The Office compares it to commissioning a painting: describing what you want does not make you the painter. Refining prompts through trial and error is treated as a “sweat of the brow” argument, and sweat alone has never been enough for copyright. If you take AI-generated material and substantially rearrange, edit, or build on it with your own creative choices, that human layer of work can be registered.5Federal Register. Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence
For anyone creating content with generative AI, the test is the same one the Naruto case asked about a macaque in Indonesia: did a human mind make the expressive choices, or did something else?