2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Since the rise of generative AI large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, artists have initiated lawsuits over copyright infringement. Developers argue for impunity because they do not directly use images and texts that are copyright protected. Yet companies such as OpenAI use human-generated media patterns to train their models, raising significant intellectual property (IP) concerns. Who owns the human-generated patterns that define an artist’s style, and who owns their use, and the distribution of those results? The Generative AI, Artists’ Intellectual Property Rights, and Collective Action (AI2CA) project is working to address these issues to ensure an ethically sustainable ecosystem which is rewarding to artists, AI developers, and producers of their work. This paper provides a description of the current issues with artists’ intellectual rights with respect to artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) followed by an overview of the AI2CA project, a description of the definitions of cognitive algorithms, and a sociotechnical analysis of the current and future possibilities for generative AI ecosystems in comic arts. The focus of the paper is on the socially engaged art (SEA) project which was created as a way to inform artists about cognitive algorithms and the authors’ systems approach to differentiating traditional value streams (TVS) that are currently protected by copyright law, versus the algorithmic value streams (AVS) which are not. The SEA project encourages artists to document their unique cognitive algorithms as a way to support the argument that these are a form of intellectual property (IP). The methodology, expected outcomes, and analysis are presented, along with a set of conclusions and description of ongoing and future work.