Are AI-Generated Works Public Domain in Mexico?

By Goodrich, Riquelme y Asociados

In a landmark decision issued on July 3, 2025, Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice (SCJN) ruled that content created entirely by artificial intelligence cannot be protected under the country’s copyright laws and must be considered part of the public domain. The decision has stirred debate across legal, artistic, and technological sectors.

The case stemmed from an attempt by an entrepreneur to register the copyright of a digital avatar generated with the help of the Leonardo AI platform. He argued that his inputs—images and textual prompts—were creative enough to constitute authorship and even claimed that the AI should be credited with moral rights.

The National Copyright Institute (Indautor) rejected the request, stating that Mexican copyright law only recognizes human beings as authors. The businessman challenged the decision through a writ of amparo, which ultimately reached the SCJN.

In its resolution of Amparo Directo 6/2025, the Court’s Second Chamber unanimously upheld the previous rulings. Minister Lenia Batres Guadarrama, who authored the decision, emphasized that creativity, originality, and personal expression are essential elements of copyright protection and that these qualities can only be attributed to natural persons. The Court reaffirmed that the Mexican Federal Law on Copyright does not contemplate the possibility of recognizing machines or algorithms as authors, regardless of how sophisticated or autonomous they may appear.

The ruling underscores the Court’s position that AI-generated content, in the absence of human creative control over the expressive elements of the work, cannot be the subject of exclusive rights. This means that such content enters the public domain from the moment it is created and may be used freely by anyone. The justices acknowledged that while tools like generative AI may involve human input, this input must go beyond mere operation or configuration of the system to qualify for legal authorship.

The U.S. Copyright Office and courts in other jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and Australia, have similarly concluded that authorship requires human contribution. However, questions remain over the threshold of human input required to turn AI-assisted content into a copyrightable work. In the Mexican context, the ruling does not close the door to works involving AI, but rather draws a line around those where no human authorship is demonstrable.

As AI tools become more widely used in publishing, music, marketing, and software development, legal systems around the world are likely to continue confronting the tension between technological advancement and traditional legal concepts of authorship and ownership.