AI, Art, and Copyright

This roundtable brings together artists, legal experts, and cultural historians to discuss pressing issues related to art and intellectual property in the age of artificial intelligence.

Kelly McKernan (they/them) is an independent artist based in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. They create original watercolor and acryla gouache paintings for galleries, commissions, and their online store. Since early 2023, Kelly has been advocating for artists’ rights as part of the historic class action lawsuit Andersen et al vs Stability AI.

Geoffrey Turnovsky is Associate Professor of French at UW and co-director of the UW Textual Studies Program. He specializes in the cultural history of early modern France, emphasizing the history of print, authorship, reading, and copyright. His book, Reading Typographically: Immersed in Print in Early Modern France, will appear in June.

Takiyah Ward is a multidisciplinary, Seattle-born creative who has explored her talents in a number of ways over the years—from custom sneakers and clothing (TDUB Customs) to murals and art activations (Vivid Matter Collective) to media and storytelling (Art Of The Matter). She also recently founded The Re-Sole 206, Seattle’s first dry cleaner for sneakers.

Kat Walsh is the General Counsel at Creative Commons. A longtime open knowledge advocate, she was at CC as a coauthor of version 4.0 of the CC license suite in 2012-15 and returned to CC in 2021. She was previously chair of the Wikimedia Foundation and a board member of the Free Software Foundation.

Video Chapters
00:00 Introduction
06:44 Kat Walsh - Copyright, Creative Commons, and AI
16:35 Kelly McKernan
36:22 Takiyah Ward
45:49 Geoffrey Turnovsky - History of Copyright
58:45 Moderated Roundtable


The Simpson Center for the Humanities is a proud co-sponsor of this event. Captioning was provided through 3Play Media services. Video editing was provided by Communications Manager at the Simpson Center, Yasi Naraghi

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