When AI Isn’t the Inventor: US Patent Office Sets New Ground Rules for AI-Assisted Inventions

The rules have just changed - and if you were thinking that whizzy new idea cooked up by your amazing AI machine could claim the AI as an inventor, think again.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released a guideline on November 26, 2025 outlined that even though AI can be credited for making inventions but patents will credit inventors only as one of us humans.

Artificial-intelligence systems – even the fancy, modern kind that can generate surprisingly realistic images and sounds – officially cannot be inventors or own intellectual property, according to a new ruling from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

This isn’t just bureaucratic fine-tuning. The change nullifies the earlier AI-inventorship directives of February 2024.

The previous program had attempted to apply old joint-inventor rules to AI-improved inventions – but that won’t be happening anymore, according to the USPTO.

If there was only one human working with AI, the decision is an easy one: apply the inventorship test that has always applied.

Why does this matter? Because artificial intelligence is everywhere now – in labs, creative studios, biotech, design and even songwriting.

There is pressure from innovators to give technologies like generative AI more legal credit.

But the USPTO is signaling that even though AI can assist, it does not get to hold the patent. No nookie for any inventing – the inventor can only be a human.

The bottom line: inventors using AI will need to document scrupulously what particular mental leaps they made – what was the spark?

What is their invention, not AI’s? And patent applications need to demonstrate written human conception, and not merely AI-assisted generation. Without that, the innovation could be ruled out.

I think this draws a bit of a sort of moral and legal line in the sand. On one hand – fair enough. After all, who exactly can be said to “own” an idea if not someone’s brain?

But on the other hand – AI gets more powerful and versatile, could this dissuade inventors from taking advantage of it to make bold, experimental leaps?

What if the role of the human being is small – perhaps raising ethical questions about how well the law in cooperation with technology is keeping up?