Can an AI be named as an inventor for a new medicine?

In the eyes of US law, only humans can be named as inventors on a patent. This rule was solidified after a court case involving a piece of software called DABUS, which an attorney tried to name as the inventor of a new type of container. The courts ruled that because the law defines an inventor as an individual, and an individual must be a human being, machines are legally ineligible for patent credit. As a result, companies currently take a don't ask, don't tell approach to using AI, simply listing the humans who manage the project as the creators, even if the AI did the bulk of the design work.

Patents are legal documents that grant an inventor exclusive rights to an idea for a set amount of time. The primary purpose of this system is to reward people for their labor so that they are encouraged to create new things. For centuries, this assumed a human was the one doing the thinking. In drug development, this usually means a scientist identifies a specific molecule that can treat a disease. Today, AI models work by analyzing vast databases of chemical structures and predicting which ones will be effective. While these systems can generate unique drug designs in seconds, they do not have legal status. Because they are considered tools—similar to a sophisticated calculator or a piece of lab equipment—their output is treated as the property of the human users who directed them.

We are approaching a moment where AI might suggest an invention that is so complex and unexpected that a human could never have conceived of it alone. If our laws continue to insist that only humans can be inventors, we may eventually face a crisis where the people who actually did the work—the machines—are ignored, while the people who simply pushed the button receive the credit and the profits. This could lead to legal challenges where patents are invalidated because the wrong people were listed. Ultimately, society must decide if our current definition of an inventor still works when the creative labor is performed by a machine.