Who Owns Art in the Age of AI?

Art has always been deeply human. It is a reflection of lived experience, emotion, and years of craft. However, lately, there’s been a growing dispute over whether artificial intelligence is crossing a line by replicating that creativity without artists’ consent. The clash between creators and AI developers is playing out in courtrooms and public campaigns.

One of the most significant real-world examples is the class-action lawsuit filed by illustrators Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz against several major AI image-generation companies, including Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt. These artists argue that their original works were scraped from the internet and used to train AI models without permission, and that the systems now produce images that mimic their styles, siphoning potential commissions from them while offering no credit, consent, or compensation.

In their complaint, the plaintiffs highlight that users can now generate artwork “in the style of” specific artists. This is a phrase that sounds innocuous but, for many creators, it is the commercial exploitation of their creative identities without their authorization.

This case isn’t an isolated dispute. In 2025, entertainment giants Disney and Universal filed a high-profile lawsuit against Midjourney, claiming the AI generator unlawfully replicated and distributed images of iconic characters without permission, calling the platform a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.”

These legal battles highlight a broader tension: AI models learn from vast datasets of existing works, but much of that material was created by artists who never agreed to have their work used this way. As these lawsuits and protests gain attention, they force us to ask: What rights do creators retain when their work becomes part of a training dataset? When does “learning” cross into exploitation?

The impacts extend beyond the courtroom. Many artists worry that widespread unconsented training could devalue human creativity, as AI tools generate art that resembles established styles but with none of the original artist’s control or credit. Others fear economic harm as commissions and opportunities that once went to living creators could increasingly go to AI outputs instead.

At the same time, defenders of AI argue that training from publicly available work is legal under existing frameworks and that AI can expand creative possibilities for everyone. But this defense often falls short of addressing artists’ deeper concerns about ownership, credit, and economic justice.

I believe that in a world where generative AI is reshaping creative industries, these case studies serve as a real-world reminder: technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It uses human labor, benefits from human culture, and inevitably impacts real people. As the debate evolves, it’s crucial for creators, technologists, and lawmakers to grapple with not just what AI can do, but what it should do, especially when it comes to respecting the rights and livelihoods of artists.

Note that these examples are taken from various sources on the internet, including “The Guardian.”