Is AI Art Having its Napster Moment?

Just this week, Getty Images sued the makers of Stable Diffusion, an artificial intelligence system (“AI”) that creates art based on existing artwork, like Getty’s. Long before this copyright lawsuit, the line between artistic “influence” and infringement had been a blurry one, but some think the very paper it’s written on is disappearing.

The U.S. began losing its grip on copyright with an earlier groundbreaking technology heralded by Napster, the “file sharing” (and copyright infringing) web application that seemingly everyone had in the early 2000s. And the music industry has never been the same since.

Might AI-art be the next chapter in technology-fueled erosion of artists’ rights, where a promising new technology winds up disrupting, not enhancing, creativity?