Designed by AI, Claimed by Whom? Fashion’s New Legal Dilemma

Introduction

In a world where algorithms sketch silhouettes and generate prints in seconds, the fashion industry finds itself facing a familiar question with a futuristic twist: Who owns creativity when no human hand is involved?

If an AI designs a dress and no designer touches a pen, who has the right to claim authorship? Can a pattern born from a prompt and rendered by machine be copyrighted? And even more provocatively: should it?

As AI tools increasingly infiltrate creative workflows, fashion, an industry long defined by human imagination and cultural nuance must now contend with a legal system built on the assumption that art, design, and innovation stem from people, not processors.

Originality, Authorship and Human Involvement

At the core of most copyright regimes lies a simple premise: originality must originate from a human mind. U.S., EU, and international copyright systems don’t just discourage non-human authorship, they outright reject it.

In the U.S., the Copyright Office has consistently held that protection attaches only to works of human authorship. Recent cases have reinforced this stance: in Thaler v. Perlmutter, the court unequivocally ruled that a machine like the “Creativity Machine” cannot be an author under the Copyright Act. In fashion, where copyright protection already applies narrowly, usually to surface-level design elements like prints, not garment shapes, this limitation becomes even more acute.

The EU, Canada, and Australia follow suit, requiring “intellectual effort” and “original expression” by a natural person. Even the Czech Republic’s courts have held that works generated solely by AI are ineligible for protection. In short, if a dress design emerges from an algorithm without significant human input, it likely falls into the legal equivalent of a black hole: visible, maybe valuable, but not protectable.

The UK’s Outlier Position and Its Limits

The United Kingdom is one of the few jurisdictions that even attempts to legislate AI authorship. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, a “computer-generated” work can be protected if there’s a human who made the necessary arrangements for its creation.

This means that if an AI tool made a design, a court could treat the human who set up or ran the program as the creator. But this rule has not been widely tested in practice. The UKIPO’s position may be pragmatic, but it raises thorny questions about whether ownership follows intent, input, or infrastructure.

Real Cases, Real Controversies

Fashion designer Kristina Kashtanova’s attempt to copyright a Midjourney-generated comic sparked debate. The U.S. Copyright Office approved her text and layout, but excluded the AI art. In Europe, courts are beginning to echo this distinction: if the final work isn’t meaningfully shaped by human hands, it gets no protection.

Hypothetical Scenarios

Consider some hypotheticals in fashion:

A startup fashions a new textile print by feeding the prompt “vintage floral pattern in neon” into an AI. If challenged, a court would likely ask how much human input went into the final design. The U.S. approach suggests a one-word prompt plus AI output is too minimal, so the pattern might be deemed unprotectable.
A luxury brand uses an AI to generate entire dress silhouettes and then merely chooses the final designs. Here too, courts would scrutinize the human role: merely picking from AI drafts may not rise to authorship. Without substantial editing or arrangement by a designer, the collection could fall outside copyright (practically into the public domain).
By contrast, if a designer uses AI like a creative assistant – for example, iteratively tweaking an AI sketch and adding unique details – then the final piece could claim protection. The Copyright Office has noted that human modifications or arrangements of AI material can be protected, since the author’s own creativity is reflected.
Under UK law, even a fully AI-originated design might be protected by naming the AI’s operator as author. Imagine a British designer who writes the code and settings for an AI fashion app; the statute would make her the author. This scenario has not yet been tested in court.

These hypotheticals show the legal puzzle: small changes in human involvement can tip a work from unprotected to protected. They also highlight the ownership question: if allowed, would the rights belong to the tool’s programmer, the user who gave prompts, or the AI’s corporate owner?

The Ownership Gap: Who Gets the Rights?

Even if courts someday accept AI-assisted fashion as copyrightable, another legal conundrum remains: who owns it? Is it the person who typed a prompt? The developer who trained the model? The brand that financed it? Or the AI’s corporate owner?

There’s no international consensus and no clear roadmap. WIPO has acknowledged the growing gap between current legal frameworks and the reality of machine-made content, but reform has been slow. Meanwhile, fashion brands are experimenting in real time with generative tools, from text-to-print systems to AI-enabled 3D garment design. If the law doesn’t evolve, brands may shift toward trademarks, design patents, or trade secrets to fill the IP void.

But here’s the twist: the more AI takes over, the more fashion will need new forms of legal protection and a serious reckoning with its own values.

The Hidden Cost: Automation’s Human Impact

History has shown, automation without accountability tends to exacerbate inequality. If AI is used to cut creative jobs while profits remain concentrated in the hands of luxury conglomerates and platform owners, the industry risks replicating its worst tendencies, just at a higher speed and with more plausible deniability.

Final Stitch: Toward Responsible Fashion Law

Fashion law now stands at a crossroads. On one path lies rigid formalism: human authorship or nothing. On the other, a vague techno-optimism that courts will “figure it out.” But between these extremes lies a more thoughtful future, one where laws evolve to recognize AI’s role without erasing human creativity, and where the rights of creators, designers, and workers are protected even in a machine-assisted world.

As lawmakers, brands, and courts wrestle with how to define authorship in the age of artificial creativity, one principle must hold: fashion is, and should remain a deeply human enterprise. The designs may get smarter. The stitches may get sharper. But the value must still come from those who imagine, build, and breathe life into the clothes we wear.

Hence, for now, those who weave human creativity into AI’s output are the ones best positioned to claim the final stitch of legal protection.

Sources and References

Editor-in-chief: Diya M. Kumar

Writer: Mrudula Kale

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