Copyright
Complex legal and ethical questions about AI training data, creative ownership, and intellectual property across visual art, music, and text.
Image: Wesley Goatley & BRAID / Better Images of AI / The Horizon / CC-BY 4.0
Articles
Teaching AI Ethics: Copyright
Copyright is a hugely contentious aspect of the current wave of AI, particularly in image generation. Questions about ownership, intellectual property, and artist rights remain unresolved.
Teaching AI Ethics: Copyright 2025
We're no longer debating hypotheticals. We're watching billion-dollar lawsuits conclude, governments choose sides, and the creative industries fight back against Big Tech.
Case Studies
Getty Images v. Stability AI
Getty Images accused Stability AI of scraping 12 million copyrighted images. The judge ruled that Stable Diffusion "does not store or reproduce" copyrighted works, but Getty won a narrow trademark claim.
Anthropic Settles With Authors for $1.5 Billion
Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit with authors. A judge ruled that training AI on legally purchased books was fair use, but using millions of pirated books from "shadow libraries" was not.
Zarya of the Dawn: AI Art and Copyright
The US Copyright Office revoked copyright protection for AI-generated images in the comic book "Zarya of the Dawn", ruling that Midjourney-generated images were not the product of human authorship.
Teaching Ideas
Compare how Australia, the UK, and the EU are handling AI and copyright differently.
How does AI challenge the Romantic notion of the solitary creative genius?
How might you design an AI training system that respects copyright?
Explore the concept of "the creator's dilemma" — what ethical frameworks help balance individual rights against collective benefits?
Analyse the correlation between copyright restrictiveness and AI innovation.
Investigate how Perplexity AI both trains on and actively fetches copyrighted news content.
How would you respond to current legal uncertainty as an artist?
How do we value music in an age when AI can generate unlimited songs?
What obligations do AI developers have to Indigenous communities?