Is AI Art Stealing? A Photographer’s Honest Take

This is probably the question I get asked more than any other when I talk about AI and photography, and it usually comes in some variation of, “isn’t this just stealing other people’s work?” or “how is this any different from copying existing images?”

And to be honest, I completely understand why people feel uneasy about it.

If you’re someone who’s spent years learning a creative skill, building a portfolio, and trying to make a living from your work, the idea of a machine being trained on millions of images without asking permission is understandably uncomfortable.

I’ve made a living from photography for about 15 years, so I don’t come at this from a tech angle, I come at it from the perspective of someone who actually cares about where images come from and how they’re used.

And the honest answer is that the question itself is more complicated than it first appears.

What people usually mean by “stealing”

When people say AI is stealing, they’re usually talking about one of two things.

Either they’re worried that:

• artists’ work has been used without consent

• or that AI is directly copying specific styles or images

Both of those concerns are valid, but they’re also often slightly blurred together in online conversations.

Most AI systems aren’t pulling a single artist’s image and reproducing it exactly, they’re trained on huge datasets and learn visual patterns across millions of examples, in a way that’s actually not that different to how humans learn, by looking at lots of work over time and absorbing what exists.

That doesn’t automatically make it ethically perfect, but it does mean it’s not quite the same as tracing someone’s drawing or copying a photograph pixel for pixel.

Where it starts to feel uncomfortable

The line gets much murkier when AI is used to deliberately mimic specific artists, especially when people prompt things like “in the style of X photographer” or “make this look like X illustrator”.

That’s the part that makes me personally uncomfortable.

Not because inspiration is wrong, every creative person is influenced by others, but because there’s a difference between being influenced by a style and actively trying to replicate someone’s recognisable visual identity using a machine.

If I spent years developing a very specific photographic style and someone built a tool whose sole purpose was to reproduce that look without involving me at all, I’d feel pretty strange about it.

So in my own work, I avoid that completely.

I’m not trying to recreate other people’s styles, I’m not training AI on specific artists, and I’m not using it to imitate existing campaigns or photographers.

I’m using it to create new imagery for real brands, based on their own ideas, their own products, and their own creative direction.

The difference between tools and intent

For me, the ethical question isn’t really about the technology itself, it’s about how it’s used and what the intention behind it is. Photography has always involved tools. Cameras replaced painting, digital replaced film, Photoshop replaced darkrooms. Every time a new tool appears, there’s a moment where people worry that it’s cheating, or that it devalues the skill that came before it. But what actually matters is what you do with the tool.

If AI is being used to:

• mass-produce generic content

• copy existing artists

• flood the internet with low-effort imagery

• or undercut creative work with no thought or care

Then yes, it starts to feel exploitative.

If it’s being used to:

• help small brands tell their story

• create original imagery from scratch

• extend what’s creatively possible

• and still involves real human decision-making

Then it feels much closer to just another creative tool.

My position as a working photographer

I didn’t get into AI because I wanted to replace artists, and I definitely didn’t get into it because I think creativity should be automated. I got into it because I’ve spent years working with small businesses who simply couldn’t afford good visual storytelling, not because they didn’t value it, but because the production costs were always too high.

AI lets me give those brands:

• bespoke imagery

• creative concepts

• and strong visual identity

Without the huge budgets that would normally be required. And importantly, I’m still doing the creative work, I’m deciding what the images should look like, how they should feel, who they’re for, and whether they actually make sense visually and ethically. The AI isn’t making those decisions, it’s just helping me produce the end result.

The honest version

I don’t think AI is inherently stealing, I also don’t think it’s automatically ethical. Like most creative tools, it sits somewhere in the middle, and the responsibility lies with the person using it, not the technology itself.

If you use AI to copy, exploit, or replace other people’s work without thought, then yes, it starts to feel wrong. If you use it to create original imagery, solve real problems, and give people access to creativity they didn’t have before, then it starts to feel a lot more like progress. And honestly, that’s the line I try to stick to.

Not “can this be done?”, but “should this be done?”, and “does this still feel fair, honest, and human at the end of the process?”