What you don't know about the AI you're using could cost you dearly

There's a conversation happening more and more in the legal departments of major brands. An AI-generated campaign arrives that's visually flawless, the client approves it, and then someone asks the uncomfortable question: is this ours? Can we protect it? Are we sure we're not infringing anyone's rights?

The silence that follows is starting to cost real money. In 2025, Anthropic signed the largest copyright infringement settlement in US copyright history: $1.5 billion. Meta, Disney, Universal Music and The New York Times have active lawsuits or recent settlements with AI companies. And in 2026 there are over 70 active infringement claims related to generative AI systems. The creative industry can no longer watch this from the sidelines as if it were a big tech problem.

Three fronts no agency, brand or production company can ignore

The first is ownership. What you generate with AI may not be yours or legally protectable if there's no documented human creative intervention behind it. The US Copyright Office made this clear in January 2025: without human authorship, there's no copyright.

The second is platform commercial rights. Midjourney, Sora, Runway, ElevenLabs... each tool has its own rules on commercial use, ownership of outputs and liability to third parties. Rules that also change. Clients are already asking about this explicitly in contracts with their suppliers.

The third is privacy. When you feed client data, real voices or strategic information into an AI tool, you enter territory directly regulated by the GDPR and the European AI Act. Most creative teams work without knowing this.

None of this means stopping the use of AI. It means using it with judgment and the right protocols — something that in 2026 is no longer optional for anyone working with brands that take their assets seriously.

This is exactly what I cover in my training sessions

I have spent years training teams at brands, agencies and companies in regulated sectors on how to work with artificial intelligence productively and safely. One of the most in-demand modules currently covers this territory in a practical way: intellectual property, commercial rights of AI platforms and privacy applied to the creative and marketing environment.

This is not a theoretical session on regulation. It's a training designed to help teams that use these tools every day make informed decisions and protect both their own assets and those of their clients.

If you'd like to explore whether this makes sense for your team, get in touch here.