Well, it seems Andy Warhol’s ghost might be shaking up the AI world. On May 18, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court tackled a very specific but potentially game-changing question: was Warhol’s ‘Orange Prince’ artwork, featured on a 2016 Conde© Nast magazine cover, a fair use of Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph of the one and only Prince Rogers Nelson?
In a 7-2 decision that could only be described as “less than thrilled”for the art world, the Court said “nope.”This verdict not only brings almost 30 years of fair use jurisprudence into question but also narrows the scope of the doctrine, potentially leaving appropriation art out in the cold. And it doesn’t stop there, my friends. Generative artificial intelligence, the new kid on the tech block, is also likely to be hit hard by this decision.
You see, Warhol might have left us in 1987, but his copyrighted works still live on, managed by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. (“AWF”). In 2016, they licensed Warhol’s ‘Orange Prince’ to Conde© Nast, who used the unpublished, unlicensed silkscreen artwork of Goldsmith’s 1981 photograph to memorialize Prince. Goldsmith was, understandably, not amused and counterclaimed for infringement, leading to a district court finding in favor of AWF on fair use grounds. But the U.S. Supreme Court had other ideas.
So, what does this mean for our AI friends? Well, generative AI platforms, which are expected to lean heavily on fair use, may find themselves grappling with the potential fallout of this decision. The Court’s ruling calls into question what constitutes “sufficiently transformative”use, a query that is sure to impact the fair use analysis applied to these emerging technologies.
In conclusion, it seems Warhol’s ghost isn’t just haunting the art world, but also lurking in the machine, stirring up a sci-fi-esque dilemma for the future of AI and copyright law.. […]
