AI isn't creating faithful reproductions of artwork. It's creating strange remixes of prior work without the artist's input or consent.
We have developed Fair Use laws over many years and many court cases to answer these kinds of questions. AI tools presently don't understand or care about that.
But there seems to be the real possibility that ML tools can create art that's sufficiently different, and the degree to which they can generate sufficiently new art is the degree to which they warrant a new policy framework.
IMO the question of an artist's copyright ownership is the wrong framing here with regards to fear of ML. If self driving technology gets better, taxi and truck drivers do not have any informal or formal ownership over the art of driving, but they have the same fear.
> Do I need permission to produce a disrespectful satire (a remix) of the Nike logo?
You'd probably be fine, but Nike's lawyers could bleed your pocketbook dry to find out. Fair Use being a subjective thing and all.
I don't have to consult with Walt Whitman to write a poem in his style, and nor should I.
I don't have to get consent from Slash to shred on my guitar in his style, and nor should I.
All of human endeavour has been the result of one ape looking at what another ape is doing, saying, "Me like! Me do too!" and then a third ape looking at them both and saying, "Me also like! Me do too, but do little different!"
We're entering the next era of our evolution, people... and its going to be guided and shaped and molded by our technology, just like every other major era of our evolution... from fire, to metallurgy, to the printing press, to the transistor... we're just in the next phase, and like every other phase, a lot of people stand to lose - but many more stand to gain.