NEW REN-AISSANCE ERA: A DIVE INTO ART AND ALGORITHM

Written by : Renee Arora, B.B.A.LL.B , Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Management Studies

       I.            Introduction

Imagine you're a well-known painter whose art pieces are distinguished by this striking yet aesthetic cunningness. As part of your work, you painted this stunning and incredibly unique piece of art for your art gallery, which took you months or even years to complete. To your surprise, you discover that the artwork you spent so much time creating was recreated by an unidentified artist using AI tools, in the same visual pattern and form that you are known for. And worse, this soon became a worldwide trend. In your state of helplessness, "AI ate my imagination," you exclaim.

What do you do in such a situation? Do you get to hold the AI developers accountable for your loss? Well, yes, I'm referring to the Studio Ghibli portrait trend. One thing about social media trends is that they spread like wildfire, from creators and influencers to companies. Everyone participates in this unique practice, like mindless drones. This trend uses generative artificial intelligence (Chat-GPT) to create portraits of people that resemble the style, theme, and pattern in which the animation studio portrays its art.

The question that arises here is whether OpenAI infringed on the rights of Studio Ghibli?

For some of you who are still confused about what Studio Ghibli is. Studio Ghibli is an animation company based in Tokyo, Japan. It is quite reputed in the animation industry and has won many awards and recognitions for its works over the years. Some of its movies have also been noted as the highest-grossing films worldwide. (My personal favourite is Spirited Away). So, back to the infringement of the rights of Studio Ghibli, for us to be able to answer this question, I want to lay down the right series of questions before us so we arrive at the right answer. In this article, I will be dealing with the fame that AI has received and the implications it has on an artist's true creations, alongside its impact on a near-predictable future. [1]

EMERGENCE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

With the emergence of artificial intelligence like Generative Pre-trained Transformer by OpenAI in November 2022, the present day has become the "new Ren-AIssance era." Generative artificial intelligence is the future, and if we look at the past 5 years, its use has doubled.[2] We've all heard of artificial intelligence (AI), but many of us have no idea what it is or is capable of. Harvard University defines generative AI as "a type of artificial intelligence that can learn from and mimic large amounts of data to create content such as text, images, music, videos, codes, and more, based on inputs or prompts."[3]

While the human brain comes up with ideas on its own (that's just how our brains are designed). According to The National Center for Biotechnology Information “The perception sub-process is estimated to take P = 80–100 ms, the time until conscious processing C = 200–280 ms, the action selection sub-process A = 60–110 ms and the entire cognitive cycle is hypothesized to take D = 260–390 ms, in layman language 10 bits per second[4], whereas an AI generator tool comes up with ideas in seconds which pretty obvious to state, is much faster than a human brain. As we rely more and more on AI generators (ironically, I too used AI grammar checkers to produce this piece), there are worries that some cognitive abilities are too valuable to be abandoned.[5] And we as humans are gifted with the boon of ideas, and when concretized, such ideas become our subject matter of copyright. Well, because as WHITE J once quoted, “An idea, however clever, however brilliant it may be, is nothing more than just an idea.” [6]Now, the next thing you must be thinking is, do these AI platforms generate original ideas like us humans?

     II.            HOW DO THESE AI MODELS GENERATE SOMETHING NEW AND ORIGINAL?

 Can the prompts generated by AI platforms truly be classified as new and original works in their very nature? It appears to us as if these AI tools can create new and original material from the already existing works, but that is not the truth in its entirety. Generative AI tools are trained on huge archives of information, ranging from images, text, and work on the prompts given to them. The AI platforms respond to the prompts by first creating rules, followed by judgments, and predictions. They then use this wealth of information to construct by data processing, answers to the user-generated prompts from the archives and bundles of information available to the AI tools.[7] So, this might unfortunately fall within the gray area of the copyrighted work, but what's more important here is that the AI developers are allowing their models to use copyrighted materials to generate prompts.[8]

  III.            LEGAL RISKS THAT FOLLOW

The emergence of generative AI has raised concerns among critics about a number of significant issues, including employment displacement, intellectual property infringement, and the impact of the false information these tools produce. This article is only concerned with the legal risks involved, including copyright infringement. Numerous legal issues have been addressed by jurists and legal writers. For example, do copyright, patent, and trademark infringements also apply to the production of AI? The grave danger is that soon it might become difficult to assess the distinction between AI-generated and human-created art.

The use or creation of copyright-protected work without the authorization of the copyright owners is known as copyright infringement and which is not a fair dealing of work and an offence of infringement of copyright is given under Section 63 of The Copyright Act, 1957.[9] Although what needs to be precisely looked into is that the material generated is a piece of transformative or derivative Work, it either draws inspiration from Ghibli’s works or is a direct copy of copyrighted characters, scenes, or animation styles. Secondly, if it is a Direct Copy, is it in its entirety, or part, replicating what Studio Ghibli's characters (my personal favourite -Totoro, a giant furry raccoon dog) or animation styles? Next, what we need to evaluate is the fair use provision, which falls under the discretionary power of the courts and varies based on the facts and circumstances present before the courts. If the Ghibli-style elements are being used for educational purposes or commentary, only then would such a production be protected under the fair use provisions.[10] In my opinion, the most important question remains whether the organizations are generating profit from using or reproducing the Ghibli patterns on any such reproduction, be it any merchandise or services, which may infringe Studio Ghibli’s copyright. What must also be noted is that such a level of similarity and potential competition with Studio Ghibli’s market share will be crucial factors in determining infringement.

Certain issues must be taken into account by courts and legal systems when evaluating cases involving the intersection between IPR and AI:

1. The rights of use come first,

 2. Ownership of AI-generated works is unclear, and

3. If users should be enabled to use these tools by giving direct reference to other authors’ copyrighted works without their consent/permission

  IV.            STANCE OF THE COURTS: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

These claims have already been brought before the adjudicating authorities. Three artists filed a class action lawsuit against several generative AI platforms in Andersen v. Stability AI et al[11]., a case filed in late 2022, claiming that the AI used their original works without obtaining a license to train its AI in their styles, enabling users to create works that might not be sufficiently transformative from their existing, protected works and, therefore, would be unauthorized derivative works. Significant infringement penalties may be imposed if a court determines that the AI's creations are unlawful and derivative.

In the case of Getty Images v. Stability AI[12], an image licensing company, named Getty, sued the creators of Stable Diffusion. Getty Images accused Stability AI of violating the rights of over 12 million photos, along with their respective captions and metadata that go with them, when it developed Stable Diffusion and DreamStudio. The accused technology's capacity to mimic Getty Images' watermarks in the generative AI outputs is another reason for the trademark infringement claims in this case.

As discussed by this author earlier the outcome of such cases rising is -The fair use doctrine, which permits the use of copyrighted works "for purposes such as criticism (including satire), comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research," as well as for a transformative use of the copyrighted material in a manner for which it was not intended, is going to add blunders on the interpretation of the fair use doctrine.

And the evidence this author carries for such predictable blunders in the arena of IPR infringements derived from the hard stated facts of the case (Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., No. 13-4829 (2d Cir. 2015)[13] where Google was successful in defending itself against infringement claims, stating that the transformative use allowed for the scraping of text from books to create its search engine. This remains a classic example of how the interpretation of the fair dealings provisions has expanded its sphere to allow the use of unlicensed content by anyone and everyone.

    V.            Conclusion

In my view, the implications may not be severe in the short term, but if a proper framework is not established to specify what constitutes and does not constitute infringement, it becomes extremely important to safeguard an artist's work, which brings us back to the copyright's original intent. Why did we initially choose to protect an artist's work?  What goes unsaid is that AI developers must ensure that their tools and platforms are strictly in compliance with the law, which means that the data they collect to train their models needs to be regulated and categorized as either licensed or unlicensed.

Secondly, once the data has been classified as licensed and unlicensed, the question of infringement of unlicensed data is cancelled out. Now, if the models are trained in such a way that unlicensed data might come into view of a user-generated prompt.  In such cases, structures and provisions for licensing and compensating copyright, trademark owners need to be added, either by licensing it or sharing in the revenue generated by the AI tools.

In the longer run, what can be done is adding certain restrictions to generative AI developers who are unable to verify that their training data is appropriately licensed may be another way to address this issue. Investors must be aware of the data's source, and AI developers must be proactive about how they obtain their data.

[1] Gil Appel, Juliana Neelbauer & David A. Schweidel, Generative AI Has an Intellectual Property Problem, HARV. BUS. REV. (Apr. 7, 2023), https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-has-an-intellectual-property-problem.

[2] What Is Generative AI?, MCKINSEY & CO. (Apr. 2, 2024), https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-generative-ai.

[3] Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), HARV. U. INFO. TECH. (n.d.),

[4][4] Tamas Madl, Bernard J. Baars & Stan Franklin, The Timing of the Cognitive Cycle, 6 PLOS ONE e14803 (2011)

[5] Celia Ford, The Case for Using Your Brain — Even if AI Can Think for You, VOX (Mar. 10, 2025https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/403100/ai-brain-effects-technology-phones.

[6] Donoghue v. Stevenson, [1932] A.C. 562 (H.L.).

[7] Kumari Srishti Agrawal, AI and IP: Navigating the Future of Innovation Law, KHURANA & KHURANA (Nov. 26, 2024)

[8] Essenese Obhan & Mehak Dhingra, The Ghibli Effect: Blurring the Lines Between Creativity and Copyright, OBHAN & ASSOCS. BLOG (Apr. 1, 2025), https://www.obhanandassociates.com/blog/the-ghibli-effect-blurring-the-lines-between-creativity-and-copyright/.

[9] Copyright Act, § 63, No. 14, Acts of Parliament, 1957 (India).

[10] Abhishek Singh, Exception to Infringement of Copyright: Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957, KHURANA & KHURANA (Apr. 20, 2022)

[11] Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd., No. 3:23-cv-00201 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 13, 2023).

[12] Getty Images (US) Inc v. Stability AI Ltd, [2025] EWHC 38 (Ch) (Eng.).

[13] Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google Inc., No. 13-4829-cv (2d Cir. Oct. 16, 2015).