AI, consent & creative practice
We use other people’s work. Other people use ours.
Where do we draw the line?
Six things people do with other people’s work. One line between them: fine by me on one side, not okay on the other.
Turn them over. The same act, now done to your work.
Some cards cross the line.
The cord follows one piece of work out of my process and into someone else’s.
MDes graduation project, The Glasgow School of Art, 2026. Shown at the GSA Postgrad Showcase.
Research, interviews, both original tools, and the 2.0 rebuild: the interactive and the workshop kit.
Draw your line · Workshop Kit 2.0. Originally: My AI Practice Statement and Trace the Line.
Making work visible helps it circulate. It also exposes it to scraping, imitation and AI-mediated reuse.
Even people who have long shared their work under open licences are now rethinking it. And the designer who worries about this may be feeding someone else’s work into an AI the same afternoon.
Maj’s library
A situation from one of my interviews. Decide where it falls.
You feed a competitor’s product shot to an AI and swap your product in.
Draw the Line1 of 6 situationsA competitor feeds your product shot to an AI and swaps theirs in.
Draw the LineIt’s your workContextual
I read literature, platform terms and UK policy documents, mapped the system, and talked to three creative practitioners and two copyright experts. I read everything for conditions: where did a judgement change, and why?
Nobody I spoke to drew the line in the same place, or by the same measure. I kept the disagreement in the picture instead of averaging it out.
The original research analysis ↗How much is borrowed
It’s the share of your own creativity and effort. Is it more original, or more borrowed?
Serena · Photographer
Whether the rule is clear
When we make posters, we’re very careful. We use licensed commercial fonts.
Zoey · Product designer
On styling, the same studio works in a grey zone.
Who made the zero to one
I can accept it making some of it. But the zero to one has to be the creator’s own.
Lulia · Former film practitioner
Who has the leverage
Right now it seems the best option is to be part of a collective organisation that can represent your interests.
Dr Amy Thomas · Copyright and creator-earnings researcher
What the law protects
Imitating the style of that work should not be an issue.
Bartolomeo Meletti · CREATe, University of Glasgow
Copyright protects expression, not style.
Where it feels wrong
I meant to make the finished product, and what I made was treated as a component.
Serena · Photographer
Literacy alone can’t close this gap: the law doesn’t reach where the harm is felt. A design could at least make the gap discussable.
Where the law draws it
Imitating the style of that work should not be an issue.
Bartolomeo Meletti · on UK copyright
Reciprocal
As the AI user
How do I use someone else’s work?
To save effort, we’d find a background from a similar product, feed it to the AI with ours, and have it swap ours in.Zoey, in the same hour she argued that creators should be paid
As the source creator
How do I want others to use my work?
If I’m using AI to do the cover of my book, I’m not paying an artist to do that. They don’t see that problem.Dr Amy Thomas, on authors who refuse AI for their writing
It isn’t hypocrisy. Nothing in a working day asks the question from both sides. That became the brief: put the two positions next to each other, around one real situation.
Trace the Line put a process on the table: seven stages, and tokens to mark where AI came in.
Observed
Round one: Sheets A and B, three GSA design peers, one in-person session. The tokens helped people look back across their process. But the talk stayed on where, and how much, AI had been used. Some read it as being asked to use less.
Read
The problem wasn’t the tokens. Sheet A was carrying too much of the reflective work, and the encounter ended before anyone could compare the two positions.
Changed
I brought Sheet C back, after the action: look from both sides. In round two, the next day with three participants, the encounter felt more coherent. That supports the redistribution. It doesn’t show lasting change.
The same lesson from the other tool. My AI Practice Statement v0.21 was tested with three students on 2 August. It recorded only how far someone accepted a use: a position without its conditions. So I added a layer to define the boundary. A position became useful only when its context could be seen too.
Collective
Individual control comes too late and is too weak. Where creators have had leverage, it came through collectives: Getty acting for its photographers, authors in a class action.
It can’t work like each individual author goes against these companies. You need some sort of collective action.Bartolomeo Meletti
So I retired the idea I started with, a personal switch at the moment of publishing. The tools became something to use together: they make a position visible enough to compare, and leave the conclusion to the people at the table.
After graduation I rebuilt the outcomes around the three findings. Where a card falls depends on the situation. Every card turns over. And the result is something to talk about with others.
Draw your line
Workshop Kit 2.0
Six double-sided situation cards and an orange cord to lay between them. Two process boards with the seven stages from the original Sheet A: pegs, small work cards, and the same cord carrying one piece of work out of my process and into someone else’s.
Where it started · 2026 graduation outcomes
Individual reflection
Consider the same studio situation twice: first as the creator of the source work, then as the person using AI.
The tool brings the two responses together in a personal statement to carry into future projects.
Read the example statement ↗
A shared, physical conversation
Put the question on the table.
A printable workshop turns a broad ethical question into things people can place, move and compare. Three sheets carry the conversation from one real project to two reciprocal roles.
A marker of perceived involvement. Not a count, percentage or score.
The contribution is a way to work with disagreement, without pretending one rule will settle it.
It is not a consent mechanism, GSA policy or legal advice. What I want to test next: Draw your line with a studio group, and whether the kit can hold a conversation without me in the room.
The original GSA Showcase ↗
