Intellectual property (IP) is the name for things people create with their minds that the law lets them own. Three kinds come up most. Copyright covers creative works: writing, pictures, music, video, code. A trademark covers a name, logo or slogan that tells customers who is selling something. A patent covers an invention. This activity is mostly about copyright.
What you're about to read is a simplified picture of US law, not legal advice, and other countries do it differently.
Copyright protects the way something is expressed: the exact words, the specific drawing, the song as written down or recorded. It does not protect the idea behind a work, a style or technique, or a fact. Anyone may write a story about a detective who solves cases by smell, paint in a thick-brush style, or state when a bridge opened. What they can't do, without permission, is copy someone's specific story, painting, or character drawing.
A simplified US view. Sort each one.
Sort all eight to see how you did.
A picture you can see on the internet is still owned by someone. Two things can make a work free to use. It can be in the public domain, which means its copyright has ended or it was released for anyone to use. Or its owner can give a license, such as a Creative Commons license, that says what you may do. A license has terms, such as "give credit" or "not for sale," and you follow them.
In the US, copyright needs a human author. In March 2026 the Supreme Court declined to take a case about an artwork made entirely by an AI system, which left that rule in place. Work made with no meaningful human creative input isn't protected. Work that mixes human creative choices with AI output may be protected for the human parts, and how much human input is enough is still being sorted out. Writing a prompt alone may not be enough. This is one reason the decisions you recorded in your Station Log mattered.
To train an AI model, a company gathers a very large collection of text, images, audio or code, and the model learns patterns from it. Gathering that collection means making copies of the works in it. Many of those works have owners who weren't asked. That is what the lawsuits are about.
Fair use is a US rule that allows some uses of a protected work without permission, such as quotation in a review, a parody, or classroom teaching. When someone says a use is fair, a court asks four questions:
These are weighed together, case by case. They aren't a checklist where four points wins. Try changing the facts below and watch each question move.
An invented company trained a model. Choose the facts for each question.
Toward the creators. It's commercial and does the same kind of job as the originals.
Toward the AI company. Facts get weaker protection.
Toward the creators. Using all of a work weighs toward the creators. Training may need whole works, so courts often treat this question as a weak one.
Close call. Without evidence, it's a close call.
Tally: 2 toward the creators, 1 toward the AI company, 1 close.
A tally is not a verdict. Courts weigh the four questions together, look at other facts too, and have reached different answers on similar-looking cases. Use the tally to decide what to ask, not who wins.
News stories mix four different kinds of statements. Learn to tell them apart, because only one of them is a decision:
| Kind | Sounds like | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| One side says | "The publisher claims…" "The company argues…" | A claim. It isn't proven. |
| A court decided | "The judge ruled…" | A decision, in one court, on one set of facts. It can be appealed. |
| They settled | "The parties agreed to end the case…" | An agreement. No judge decided who was right. |
| The story doesn't say | (nothing) | Don't fill the gap. Note it as unknown. |
A chatbot can help you find sources. It shouldn't be your judge. It can invent a link, mix up which side said what, or describe a case as decided when it is still going. Ask it for places to look, then open every source yourself and read what it actually says.
Check that each link opens, that it's about the case you asked about, and what date it was published. Write down the date, because cases change.
The law asks whether something is allowed. You can also ask whether it's fair, and the two can come apart. Three questions help with fairness:
Substitution matters because it separates two situations. A tool that sorts photos by color doesn't take work from photographers. A tool that makes pictures people would otherwise hire an illustrator for does. The same fact shows up in the fourth fair-use question, effect on the market.
| Question | Answer from the facts |
|---|---|
| Consent | Missing |
| Credit | Present |
| Pay | Missing |
| Substitution | Yes: it competes with the illustrators |
Missing: consent, pay. Because the tool substitutes for the illustrators, whoever is missing from the list above has a stronger reason to object.
The Cs aren't the law. A tool can have all three and still be disputed, and can lack one and still be legal. They tell you what to ask.
Remember that a style isn't protected by copyright. So is it fine to prompt "in the style of" a living artist? It may be legal, and it still raises the Cs. The artist wasn't asked, isn't named in what you make, isn't paid, and your picture may stand in for one they'd have been hired to make. Many people think that's unfair, and others think style is how all artists learn from each other. Both views are worth knowing. For this course, describe what you want in your own words, as you did in Creative Stations.
Copying a specific character or work is a different, riskier thing, because that is expression. That is why you don't ask an AI to make a famous character, and why you don't share outputs outside class without checking the tool's terms.
You built positions in 2.1.3: a claim, two pieces of evidence someone else can check, the strongest objection, and a reply. Use the same structure on this question: should AI companies have to get permission before training on creators' work? Your evidence can be the facts of a case you read (with its date and source), your own Four Questions, and the Cs.
An invented student, Dev, read about an invented case (Lowell Press v. Brightpath AI) and wants to argue about tools that sell substitutes.