AI technology has found its way into every corner of our lives, so it is only natural that creative professionals would use art generator tools to their advantage.

While AI-produced art has been around for some time, software released this year including, DALL·E 2, Midjourney AI, and Stable Diffusion, has allowed even the most inexperienced artists to produce intricate, abstract, or photorealistic compositions by merely typing a few words into a text box. Within seconds, they produce millions of image options. While not every one of those pieces may be an actual masterpiece, they could certainly deliver inspiration to human artists.

With collaborations between human artists and machines growing, what are the legal concerns involved? Human art creations, whether they were created in collaboration or by a single individual, are protected by copyright protection laws. So once an AI-generated masterpiece is created, what’s stopping someone from claiming it as their own and using it commercially or preventing others from using it? How can laws that were effectively devised hundreds of years ago apply to a technology or a form of intellectual creation that is just emerging?

Copyright registration and protection laws currently recognize the creative input of the artist. Being recognized as the owner of a piece allows artists to sell permanent or temporary rights to reproduce their pieces. Standards require the artwork to be an original, fixed in a tangible medium, and demonstrate a minimal amount of creativity.

Unsurprisingly, current copyright law does not specifically mention human authorship or artificial intelligence. However, current interpretations by the U.S. Copyright Office have made it clear that securing a copyright claim for a work of art requires human involvement in the creation of the work.

An artist looking to collaborate with an AI art generator has created a piece that they are looking to enhance with the help of software. Does that mean the owner of the software gains rights? To answer that question, we need to look at the fine print in the terms of use of the tool in question.



Open AI, the owners of DALL.E2 have carefully worded their terms to give the rights to the (human) creator who delivered the original creative input. At the same time, they make it clear that the nature of machine learning and artificial intelligence means that similar results may be delivered to another creator. That second creator would then own the second output. OpenAI also gives users full usage rights to commercialize the images they create with DALL·E, including the “right to reprint, sell, and merchandise.”

Apart from ownership rights of the AI-generated artwork, there are additional copyright concerns that may arise. There may be infringement claims on the final image based on copyrighted artworks inputted into the AI at the time of machine learning which may infringe the rights of copyright holders.

There is currently no complete protection from intentional or unintentional unauthorized use of copyrighted images. If there was substantial contribution from a team or a person who provided substantive inputs deemed creative enough for the ultimate output of the work, then they could potentially own copyright in the work. If the design, however, was significantly attributed mainly to the AI or the program, then the work would likely not be copyrighted and would possibly belong in the public domain.

This will be a fascinating issue that Art-Linx will continue to cover.