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 art work, like Getty’s. Long before this copyright law suit, the line between artistic “influence” and infringement had been a blurry one, but some think the very the paper it’s written on is disappearing.

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

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