In terms of copyright, it’s even more complicated—we’re moving out of the realm of art and into the world of law. A well-directed AI can easily plagiarize famous artists. But in painting, plagiarism has been practiced for hundreds of years. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who actually painted a given work, especially since many were created with assistants, and we often just attribute it to the “school of…”

I don’t do mass reproductions; I paint for my own enjoyment, by hand. That alone would make it pretty hard—at least in France—for anyone to convince a judge to force me to give money to an open-source model that you’d have a tough time proving I even used!

The real copyright issue arises with the mass printing of plagiarized designs on mugs or similar items. In that case, you’d likely have more trouble with the artist whose work was used to train the AI than with the AI’s provider or programmer.