Milton Arts Guild sets talk on AI and art ownership

Milton Arts Guild will hold a free public discussion on artificial intelligence and art ownership at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17, at the MAG Art Space, 9 Park St. in Milton.

The event, “Whose Art is This? The Artist’s or AI’s?”, will feature Guy Miller, an assistant professor of art at Delaware State University. He is due to examine how AI is being used in art, the implications of that use and what artists and art consumers should know, according to the Cape Gazette.

Barry Goodinson, a member of the guild’s board, will also set out MAG’s policy on the use of AI in creating artwork.

The presentation is part of the guild’s MAG Talks programme, which addresses the creation, curation and business of art. Miller, a Delaware State alumnus who completed a studio arts degree in 2013 and an MFA at American University in 2019, has previously worked across two- and three-dimensional art.

The discussion comes amid unresolved questions over authorship and copyright in AI-assisted visual work. The U.S. Copyright Office’s guidance says copyright protects material produced by human creativity, and that a work generated solely from a prompt lacks human authorship where the technology determines its expressive elements.

The office treats AI-assisted work case by case. Copyright can cover a person’s creative selection, arrangement or sufficiently substantial modification of AI-generated material, but only the human-authored elements are protected. Applicants registering works with more than minimal AI-generated content must disclose it and describe the human contribution.

AI-generated and partly AI-generated works have already entered the art market in large numbers, according to Brookings. Its analysis identified continuing disputes over copyright, authorship, enforcement and the economic value of human creative work, including whether copyrighted material may be used to train generative-AI systems.