Is AI art, art ?

Photo courtesy of Sanket Mishra/Pexels

The recent development of AI in creative spaces has led to the debate: what makes something art? What makes someone an artist? Traditional art comes in many forms—from drawing with pencil on paper, to sculpting with recycled materials—but even traditional art has sparked debates on what is considered true art. Now that generative AI has entered the conversation, there is even more debate on what can be considered art. 

According to Futurism, “Proponents of generative AI say the tech has greatly lowered the barriers of entry in the art world,” while those who oppose generative AI cite the lack of oversight on the tools, as well as issues with alleged usage of copyrighted materials. According to Scientific American, in 2025, “More than 6,000 artists protested that the AI models used to create these works had been trained on copyrighted images without creator consent.”

Generative AI art systems are trained on extensive databases of art—some of which may be from copyrighted material. The Guardian explains that it is difficult to know what exactly is sourced from copyrighted material due to the “closely – guarded models, which underpin their systems and make it difficult to know just how much their tech relies on other creatives’ work.” This creates questions about the ethics of using AI art tools. AI art is also created from the images which the tools are trained on. This means that it is not 100 percent original, regardless of intent. 

In 2022, as per Futurism, “the US Copyright Office rejected computer scientist Stephen Thaler’s request to copyright his AI-generated image.” This rejection led to a long legal battle, with appeals going so far as the Supreme Court. Thaler argues that his AI-generated art should be considered art because he created the prompt to generate the image, and therefore he should be able to copyright the image. 

According to Artnet, the Copyright “office ruled that without ‘human authorship,’ the artwork was not eligible for copyright protection.” This ruling has been held up in both district and appeals courts before reaching the Supreme Court just recently, who refused to hear the case, solidifying the decision. 

Following the original case, “the Copyright Office released new guidance that reaffirmed that A.I.-generated artworks made using text prompts will not be protected by copyright” in 2025, as per Artnet. It is important to note that the reasoning behind this guidance is that the author who is applying for the copyright must create the output, in whatever medium. 

The official report from Copyright.gov specifically outlines that “No matter how many times a prompt is revised and resubmitted, the final output reflects the user’s acceptance of the AI system’s interpretation, rather than authorship of the expression it contains.” This specifies that as far as copyright is concerned, AI art is not a human product. 

This does not necessarily negate the validity of AI art—though there are other arguments that can be made to that claim—but rather removes the legal copyright protection from AI art and artists. There are many ways that AI art may be ethically used and created, and it can help to expand creativity for those who do not have the ability to create art on their own. Even so, the debate on what constitutes art is likely to continue, but the legal battle will not.