Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Thursday weighed for the first time a challenge to the U.S. Copyright Office’s denial of copyright protection for an artificial intelligence-generated Image.

The office denied computer scientist Stephen Thaler’s copyright application in 2018 for an image he created by an AI system he programmed, saying the lacked any human involvement. Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with the office, which prompted Thaler’s appeal.