AI in Design: The Rabbit Hole to Wonderland

In the ever-evolving landscape of design, Artificial Intelligence is rewriting the rules of creation. Today, designers find themselves tumbling down a metaphorical rabbit hole much like Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As we fall, the familiar boundaries of creativity, abstraction, and innovation expand with every twist and turn, opening a world where algorithms and prompts become powerful collaborators. But as AI’s role in design grows, a crucial question hangs in the air: who truly owns the work?

With tools like Midjourney, we’ve entered an era where generating artwork through a few well-chosen prompts is becoming commonplace. The appeal is clear: endless possibilities and inspiration at your fingertips. It can provide creatives with the instance gratification of creating something new, much like taking a photo, one click and you have something that didn’t exist before. But when it comes to intellectual property, the ownership of these AI-generated works exists in a hazy legal terrain. While platforms like Midjourney claim that “you, the prompter” own the artwork, this ownership doesn’t carry the traditional weight of copyright protection. You can possess and use the digital file however you wish, but you can’t claim exclusive rights. In essence, you hold the product, but not the intellectual property, and therein lies the rub for the branding world.

Brands seek ownership, something uniquely theirs to defend and build upon. When they commission design work, they expect to receive assets that carry exclusivity. But with AI in the mix, it’s uncertain whether these creations can be legally protected from use by others. The fine line between “owning” and “ownable” becomes a brand identity paradox, one that demands careful consideration as AI reshapes the design industry.

Recently, a landmark case in New York City has begun to address these ambiguities. Kris Kashtanova, a New York-based artist, became the first to receive registered copyright for an AI-generated artwork—a graphic novel titled Zarya of the Dawn, created using Midjourney.

“I got copyright from the Copyright Office of the USA on my AI-generated graphic novel,” Kashtanova shared. “I was transparent about how it was made, and I put Midjourney on the cover page.” By clarifying the process behind the work, Kashtanova made a compelling case that AI creators should hold copyright when they transform a concept into a cohesive, authored piece.

Though AI-generated art has likely been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office before, this case appears to be the first where latent diffusion models were publicly acknowledged. Kashtanova’s achievement brings us closer to defining ownership for a design that marries human intention with machine output.

While this case signals a step forward, it also exposes deep fissures in the foundation of AI-generated art. The underlying models powering tools like Midjourney, DALLE, and Nightcafe are trained on vast datasets of imagery scraped from the internet and stock photo platforms, often without permission from original artists and photographers. Many creatives argue that these AI platforms violate their copyrights by building on their work without compensation. This tension has already prompted Getty Images to cease accepting submissions of AI-generated art, citing “open questions with respect to the copyright of outputs” and “unaddressed rights issues with the underlying imagery and metadata.”

As AI’s role in design continues to grow, so does our responsibility to navigate these ethical and legal questions carefully. For agencies and brands, AI represents an incredible opportunity to build captivating, meaningful and idea driven assets. Yet, we must remember that this new territory comes with rules that are still being written. When it comes to the intersection of creativity, ownership, and AI, we’re only beginning to scratch the surface.

In the spirit of Halloween, we created the attached image using Midjourney to explore the intricacies of ownership in the realm of AI. There are two ways to interpret how this image came to life. One could argue that it simply depicts a levitating girl in a haunted landscape, seemingly possessed by a demonic force. The style and lighting were meticulously crafted through art-directed prompts to align with our creative vision. Alternatively, this image draws inspiration from a mix of sources: the enchanting tale of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, the immersive light installations of James Turrell, and the chilling narrative of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist.

Image made in Midjourney –ar 3:2 –v 6