The primary issues of plagiarism and copyright in AI art arise from how these models are trained and the difficulty in distinguishing between "inspiration" and outright copying. Here are some key concerns:
AI models are often trained on massive datasets scraped from the internet, including works protected by copyright. These datasets may include artworks by living or recent artists who have not given consent for their work to be used in this way. Critics argue that this is equivalent to feeding an AI copyrighted images and having it produce new images that are still based on the original work, raising questions of fair use, derivative works, and copyright infringement.
While AI art generators are designed to create new works, they can sometimes reproduce existing works in near-identical form, particularly if the training data is small or biased toward certain images. In some cases, output images have been shown to closely resemble specific artworks, leading to accusations of direct copying.
When AI generates an image inspired by a particular artist’s style or composition, the original creator often receives no credit. Even when the AI does not directly copy an artwork, its ability to mimic a style without attribution raises ethical questions about fairness and recognition. Artists who have developed unique visual styles can feel their work is being exploited without proper acknowledgment.
Current copyright laws were not designed with AI-generated art in mind, leaving many legal questions unanswered:
Who owns the copyright of AI-generated art? Is it the developer of the AI, the user who inputs the prompts, or the creators of the training data?
Can AI art be protected by copyright at all? Copyright typically requires a "human author," which some jurisdictions interpret as excluding AI.
Is AI output a derivative work? If an AI-generated image closely resembles or references a particular copyrighted image, is it legally considered a derivative work?
Some artists argue that AI-generated art commodifies and dilutes human creativity. As AI-generated works flood online spaces, the unique value of hand-crafted art may be diminished, particularly if AI tools replicate styles that artists spent years developing. This can create a situation where the market is oversaturated with art that lacks human intention or originality.