Style Matters: Intellectual Property Rights and the New Creative Economy

The rapid emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) poses an existential threat to the creative profession. It not only serves as a potential substitute for human creativity in general, but also threatens to displace specific artists by reproducing their unique artistic styles. A distinct artistic style serves as an economic asset for an artist, but also as a reflection of their personal identity. Therefore, safeguarding the continued development of such artistic styles is essential not only to protecting economic opportunities for artists but also to preserving their artistic integrity and fostering a culturally rich, human-centric creative landscape. Nevertheless, granting extensive legal protection to individual artistic styles poses significant challenges. Imitation and adaptation of artistic styles have always been integral to human creativity. Copyright law addresses this by being cautious of not affording monopolies over ideas but by granting protection to expressions of ideas. While stylistic features, particularly in visual arts, can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from original creative expressions protectable by copyright, this chapter suggests that such features may not play a central role in assessing infringement, as doing so could risk undue limitations on the creative freedom of others. Instead, it argues that efforts should focus on upholding moral rights to prevent false attribution of works not created by the artist and to protect against derogatory treatments of works that could harm the artist’s reputation. Finally, it is suggested that intellectual property rights and remuneration models adapt to the changing creative landscape by allowing artists to be compensated for the use of their names to generate new works specifically designed to reproduce their artistic styles.