Working on this project pulled me deeper into copyright law than I ever expected. And, strangely, it turned out to be more interesting than I’d imagined. With AI involved, things get complicated quickly. Some of it is legal, some of it is ethical and a lot sits in that grey uncomfortable space in between.
I did speak to a lawyer, obviously. But beyond that, I relied on something simpler, something older than any set of written regulations: instinct. I asked myself what I thought mattered. How does this feel? Will it annoy people? Would it offend other creatives? Could it? Should it?
If anything, the whole process made me respect creative work even more.
When you use an image generator, you’re basically working blind. You type in a few words and it spits something out. But what happens during generation is hidden. These systems are trained on massive datasets made up of images pulled from across the internet. The truth is, you have no idea what the model is drawing from. It could be anything. Photos from your favourite photographer, a random meme from 2008, a sexist advert from the Seventies: basically a million random influences mashed together.
“If you’ve admired someone’s work for years, that influence is already baked in. It shows up whether you mean it to or not”
Yes, you ‘shape’ the outcome. You choose the prompt, adjust the style, decide what to keep. But you’re also being shaped by the tool. Midjourney gives you options, and the one you pick reveals something about your own tastes, biases and references. But even when you’re making choices, you’re just responding within the parameters of the system.
If you’ve admired someone’s work for years, that influence is already baked in. It shows up whether you mean it to or not. And if you’ve been creating for decades, your own habits become part of the problem. Avoiding imitation takes real work when you’re a creative. Not just dodging direct references, but pushing back against your own instincts. AI doesn’t want you to do any of that, it wants to repeat not create new.
It’s messy and, who am I kidding, it’s not like it’s going to get cleaner any time soon. But it’s a conversation worth having, now more than ever.
(Written by HUMAN)
