AI art raises copyright concerns

Posted Nov 20, 2023

By Alicia Pacheco

News Editor

Despite claims of artificial intelligence (AI) not actually taking over the jobs of human artists, AI art has shown itself in multiple main media shows and major competitions, which has upset many artists and creatives, who fear copyright laws changing their ways and protecting these creations under the law.  

In August, a Washington D.C court declared that  A.I art cannot be copyrighted without any identifiable human input, and artists whose work might be used to train these AI generators cannot sue for copyright infringement unless the program has both access their works and if it is creating work “substantially similar” outputs of it. But to no tangible luck. 

That does not prevent people from submitting generated pieces of art to contests as well as fighting the courts repeatedly to be able to copyright these works. 

Last year, the Colorado State fair gave a top prize to a game designer by the name of Jason Allen who publicly disclosed his artwork had been made with the program Midjourney to generate an image out of words to create the winning piece called Théâtre D’opéra Spatial. At the time of his submission, there were no rules against the submission of AI art and judges claim to have had no idea of the fact while Allen claims to have been transparent about his piece. Now the fair has added to their rules the need for artists to disclose if their work was made by AI before making their submissions. 

Creating and participating in art contests with A.I generated art has no legal repercussions other than the pieces not being protected under copyright law, as copyright only protects creations made by human beings and not digital intelligence. 

 “I personally find it a little scary that someone could type in text and then AI generates a graphic that the person might be able to copyright. Art Teacher Julie Talley said, “Copyrighting the text is one thing, but having copyrights to an image created without any of your own actual personal or manual skill doesn't seem quite right to me.” 

Earlier this year, a Judge Beryl Howell rejected a case from Imagination Engines CEO Dr. Stephen Thaler after his second attempt at copyrighting a work called A Recent Entrance to Paradise created by his AI model known as Creativity Machine. 

Another instance where AI art has caused controversy recently was the release of the miniseries Secret Invasion on June 21, 2023. The opening credits of the movie were called out for being AI generated, to which the company Marvel Studios replied saying they involved the company's art department along with the AI tools. The director and executive producer, Ali Selim’s comment on the use of AI was that the technology to him is “Exciting and inevitable.”

Many artists wonder if A.I. Art being depicted in such a way by a big corporation would mean the beginning of artificially made art taking over the jobs of artists towards shows and movies that will be on the big screen.