Widanapathirana, S. H.2026-01-062025-10-10978-624-6010-12-62783 – 8862https://rda.sliit.lk/handle/123456789/4380The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has created new avenues for creativity across diverse fields. While expanding the horizons of creativity, AI has also introduced a plethora of challenges to the intellectual property law regime. Copyright protection, as a cornerstone of intellectual property law, safeguards the moral rights and economic rights of authors who create original artistic, literary or scientific work utilising independent skill, thought and efforts. Thus, creations generated by utilising AI models via prompting, conflicting notions surrounding the ownership and authorship of the rights attached to such creations have been subjected to extensive debates. The recent decision in Thaler v. Perlmutter by the Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit has decisively addressed the debate pertaining to the ownership of copyright in AI generated works. The judgement cemented the view that copyrightfor works that are generated by AI platforms cannot be attributed to the AI system itself,depicting the quality of anthropocentricity. Thus, by employing the doctrinal and explorative approaches in qualitative research methodology, this study methodologically evaluates the judgement in Thaler v. Perlmutter with the goal of developing a conceptual foundation for the domain of authorship and property rights for AI generated works. The study drew upon the natural rights theory and personhood theory of intellectual property law for the purposes pertaining to the evaluation. The findings depict that Thaler v. Perlmutter reinforces the necessity of human authorship for copyright protection portraying conformity with the theoretical underpinnings of intellectual property law. At the same time, the study recognizes emerging calls for legal reforms to accommodate the evolving nature of creativity motivated by AI-relatedtechnologies.enArtificial IntelligenceCopyrightAuthorshipWorksAnthropocentricityArticlehttps://doi.org/10.54389/RHKH9930