Think about your favorite song, movie, or music. Then think about how you enjoy, watch, listen to or interact with that content. The answer? Copyright.
Copyright has not disappeared in the age of AI, but it is being stress-tested in new ways. Take music, for example. Digital Service Providers (DSPs) now report tens of thousands Tracks created by artificial intelligence It is uploaded daily. Some of these compositions have risen to the top levels of the listening charts, competing alongside human-created works. Generative systems now produce text, visual art, and music on a large scale, blurring the lines between inspiration, imitation, and automation. Against this backdrop, current conversations around copyright will determine whether it remains a living promise to creators or becomes an artifact that companies politely acknowledge but can quietly deal with.
I’ve spent my career advocating for copyright on behalf of record labels, studios, and creators. I now teach business students who are eager to build with AI and protect the sanctity of human creativity. If copyright has ever been at a crossroads, that moment is now. What a time to teach the future leaders of the entertainment industry something that is changing before our eyes.
A career framed by the development of copyright
before joining the full-time faculty at American University’s Kogod School of Business, where I serve as director Bulletin board recognized In the Business & Entertainment program, I’ve spent decades working for companies that rely on copyright — both for protection and innovation; Copyright not only protects catalogs of creative works, but also justifies investment in new artists, stories, and songs. In the absence of predictable ownership and licensing frameworks, there will be no incentive to finance risk.
In 2013, corporate America specifically left out of concerns that songwriters, filmmakers and other independent creatives would be swamped by better-funded votes when policy lines were drawn. In 2026, artificial intelligence technologies prove that many of these concerns still exist
In contrast to the new distribution model, AI systems can ingest massive amounts of copyrighted works in seconds, generate output at scale, and compete directly with the same material they trained. In this sense, the rise of artificial intelligence reinforces the basic premise that the contribution of the human author should be the pillar of the creative ecosystem.
What the law quietly refers to
Despite all the chaos and uncertainty, American law so far sends a clear message that humans are still at the center of copyright. The US Copyright Office has emphasized that human authorship is required for protection; Businesses that rely solely on machines are not eligible, a position affirmed by the courts in cases such as: Thaler v. Perlmutter.
Meanwhile, courts and agencies are debating whether consuming massive amounts of copyrighted material to train AI models equates to infringement or “fair use.” A growing wave of lawsuits—brought by authors, artists, music publishers, and media companies—led to early decisions that took different directions. Some judges emphasized transformative use, while others pointed out the limitations.
While we wait for these court opinions to help pave the way, some rights holders are turning to licensing deals and settlements. These private negotiations between AI companies, publishers, music rights organizations and media companies suggest that these uses of training will be explicitly licensed rather than merely exploited in the future, the impact of which no one can be sure yet. These agreements may help formalize compensation structures, but they also raise questions about who has leverage to negotiate and who does not. Owners of large catalogs can secure deals. Independent creatives often lack similar bargaining power. This imbalance represents one of the distinct tensions of this moment.
Legitimacy of training on an artificial intelligence model
When students ask whether it is “legal” to train AI models on copyrighted works extracted from the Internet, they are actually asking a deeper question: “Does my work matter if a machine can learn from it for free?” Today’s business students are emerging digital natives and rights holders. Many of them are also artists themselves. They are experimenting with AI tools for copywriting, campaign design and business models. Most importantly, I am not asking them to stay away from these techniques. They examine whether and how a career in the entertainment industry will be sustainable in the coming years. I expect the presence of AI to continue to grow, so they need to understand it deeply to achieve impact in their areas of passion.
Addressing underlying concerns about the value of their work is relatively easy, but answering the question about legitimacy is more nuanced and complex. The current copyright framework was not built for a world where an AI system can ingest millions of books or songs in an instant, and then generate output at scale that looks close enough to the originals to reduce their value. Where technology moves dramatically, law moves gradually.
Rather than offering simplistic answers, I encourage students to consider three questions that increasingly shape responsible engagement:
- Who has the input to the form you are using, and did they have a real choice in providing content to the form?
- Are your outputs an addition to human creativity, or simply cheaper substitutes for someone else’s work?
- If it succeeds, will the creators whose work helped train these systems share in that success, or will they be further marginalized?
These conversations are not theoretical. They will shape how this next generation writes contracts, builds companies, and frames political debates. If we do this right, AI literacy and copyright literacy will be taught side by side.
So, can copyright exist in the age of artificial intelligence?
The current moment is characterized by overlapping pressures: ongoing lawsuits, regulatory scrutiny, proprietary licensing deals, and workforce anxiety across the creative industries. At the same time, the adoption of AI within studios, agencies and record labels is accelerating. Companies are experimenting even as the courts deliberate.
The future of copyright in the age of artificial intelligence depends on whether policymakers, companies, and educators affirm its primary purpose: to protect and stimulate human creativity. Maintaining a balance between innovation and authorship will require thoughtful choices about consent, compensation, and accountability before standards around appropriateness calcify.
I’ve spent my career trying to make sure creative people aren’t treated as collateral damage in someone else’s innovation story. In the age of artificial intelligence, copyright can still be a living promise, but only if we remember who it was written for — and if we give those human voices real power in shaping what comes next.
