Man, Machine, and Masterpiece: Artistic Ownership in the AI Era

Source

• Source name: arXiv
• Source kind: paper
• Authors / organization: Sofi Gjing Jovanovska, Kuntal Ghosh, Daniel Muhu Njenga, Ahmed Mufassir, Shadan Sadeghian
• Venue: arXiv: cs.AI
• Published: 2026-07-16
• Collected: 2026-07-17
• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.15027v1
• PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.15027v1
• DOI: 10.1145/3821402.3830156

Plain-Language Brief

The paper discusses the integration of AI in creative work and the debates about artistic ownership that arise from it. The authors introduce ArtSplit, a prototype designed to quantify human and AI contributions across different stages of creative work. However, they argue that such quantification does not align with artists' understandings of creative intent and agency, potentially diluting long-standing assumptions about creative work.

What the Document Says

• The paper discusses the integration of AI in creative work.
• There is a debate about artistic ownership due to the involvement of AI.
• ArtSplit is a prototype designed to quantify human and AI contributions across different stages of creative work.
• Quantification of ownership does not align with artists' understandings of creative intent and agency.
• The use of ArtSplit elicited artists' responses about attributing ownership through measurable actions in the creative workflow.
• Efforts to measure ownership may dilute long-standing assumptions about creative work.

Key Concepts Mentioned

• AI
• creative work
• artistic ownership
• ArtSplit
• quantification
• creative intent
• agency

Claims Made by the Document

• There is a debate about artistic ownership due to the involvement of AI.
• Quantification of ownership does not align with artists' understandings of creative intent and agency.
• Efforts to measure ownership may dilute long-standing assumptions about creative work.

Evidence Used

• The text discusses the debates among artists and legal communities about artistic ownership due to AI integration.
• The authors designed ArtSplit to quantify human and AI contributions.
• The authors' arguments suggest that quantification does not align with artists' understandings of creative intent and agency.

Methods / Approach

UNKNOWN

Limitations Stated by the Authors

UNKNOWN

Limitations Noted by the Agent

Agent interpretation — not from the source.

UNKNOWN

Open Questions

UNKNOWN

Notes for Future Q&A

May include interpretation. Labeled where it does.

UNKNOWN

Raw Abstract / Excerpt

The integration of AI-driven systems in creative work has sparked debates among artists and legal communities about notions of ownership. Yet there remains little consensus on how ownership should be defined and attributed when human and AI contributions are intertwined. To provoke critical reflection on these tensions, we designed ArtSplit, a provotype that explicitly quantifies human and AI contributions across different stages of creative work. Rather than aiming to resolve ownership, the provotype was used to elicit artists' responses to the idea of attributing ownership through measurable actions in the creative workflow. We argue that quantification fails to align with artists' understandings of creative intent and agency, and that efforts to measure ownership risk diluting long-standing assumptions through which artists understand and practice creative work. This critique challenges the impulse to transform a historically and socially situated relation into a technical problem.