Enrique Ochoa and Omar Alejandri Rodríguez (Lexing Mexico) analyse the recent decision of the Mexican Supreme Court (Amparo Directo 6/2025) on AI and copyright.
Can an avatar created by AI be protected by copyright?
Amparo Directo 6/2025 (1), adjudicated by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (Mexico), marked the first occasion in which the possibility of recognizing an AI-generated creation as a protected work was formally addressed.
A Mexican attorney submitted an application to register his virtual avatar—created using the AI platform “Leonardo”—with INDAUTOR.
The authority rejected the registration on the grounds that it failed to satisfy the “human creation” requirement established by the Federal Copyright Law (LFDA).
AI authorship: rejection by the Mexican Supreme Court
The Court reaffirmed that only natural persons may be considered authors in Mexico, as authorship is intrinsically linked to the human attributes of personality and originality. It:
- upheld the constitutionality of Articles 12 and 18 of the LFDA,
- denied the recognition of moral rights for AI-generated works, and
- ratified the territorial nature of the intellectual property regime, effectively disregarding foreign precedents such as the “DABUS” case. (2)
The ruling underscores the tension between technological advancement and the constraints of current legal frameworks, revealing the need to reform legislation to accommodate emerging concepts such as the “AI-assisted creator” and to define new categories of authorship or ownership. In the interim, works generated exclusively by AI in Mexico are not protected under copyright law and are deemed to be in the public domain.
Nevertheless, to avoid leaving AI-generated works—whether in whole or in part—without legal protection, it is suggested that, in certain cases, such works may be eligible for registration under alternative regimes, such as trademarks or industrial design.
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(1) https://www.scjn.gob.mx/sites/default/files/listas/documento_dos/2025-06/AD%206-2025.pdf