AI Art and the Law: Who Owns the Copyright?

The portrait of Edmond de Belamy, created by the French collective Obvious using a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), sold at Christie's for $432,500, far exceeding its estimate of $7,000–$10,000. The artwork, printed on canvas with inkjet, is one of eleven portraits in the Famille de Belamy series. This sale highlights legal ambiguities surrounding AI-generated art. Under Italian copyright law (L. 633/1941), only works of human intellect are protected. While the GAN produced the image, Obvious is considered the author. However, as machine learning enables AI to learn from experience, the creator's control diminishes. The European Parliament addressed these issues in 2017 with recommendations on civil law robotics, led by MEP Mady Delvaux, referencing Asimov's three laws. The recommendations cover liability, privacy, and the legal status of machines. Other AI art projects include The next Rembrandt (presented at Galerie Looiersgracht60, Amsterdam), Tate's Recognition (2016, by Fabrica/Benetton Group), and The Painting Fool by Simon Colton. AI has also ventured into music (Google DeepMind) and literature (The Day A Computer Writes A Novel, shortlisted for the Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award).