Machines Do Not Author: The Copyright Tribunal’s First Word on Artificial Intelligence in Aryeh Movement Limited v Akoth & Another
AI & Copyright in Kenya · Tribunal Case E001 of 2025 AI & authorship in Kenya A reading of Tribunal Case E001 of 2025 [2025] AI governance copyright KECOT human authorship [2025] KECOT 6 (KLR) · Aryeh Movement Limited v Akoth & another · first Kenyan adjudicatory decision on AI-assisted creative work Abstract · On 22 August 2025, Kenya’s Copyright Tribunal handed down Aryeh Movement Limited v Akoth & another , the first Kenyan decision to confront the question the Copyright Act has never answered: can a work generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence attract copyright protection, and if so, in whom does that protection vest? This paper reads the judgment closely: a registration dispute between a commissioning company and a commissioned author, resolved principally on jurisdictional grounds before turning to what the Tribunal said and did not say about AI. The central fi...