PIXELS TO PATTERNS: AUTHORSHIP BATTLES IN AIFASHION IP

Abstract

The significance of AI in the 21^st century, is one that cannot be neglected or hidden. AI has taken over most of the foremost sectors of the economy, thereby raising a concern in the realm of ownership, employment, etc. In the Fashion Industry, AI is able to reproduce the best and rare fashion designs with just a click, creating an atmosphere of dilemma in the circumference of ownership. It also makes the situation difficult at the time when further steps are taken, that deal with the protection of ownership, including the copyright protection. This article tries to analyse the current trends in the fashion industry concerning AI, not limited to ownership and makes certain recommendations to successfully incorporate a mitigation chance in case of such a change in society, into the laws to cater to such situations when it arises in the future.

INTRODUCTION

The Fashion industry is highly competitive these days. Therefore, the brands are often in the run to safeguard their carefully planned and created designs to protect their integrity. Many of the world’s successful brands have built their success mainly on unique designs that have often become the recognising factor for their consumers. It creates a feeling of luxury among the customers, which drives the markets for the big brands. That is one of the main reasons why there are so many rip-offs of famous companies’ products in the markets, for those customers who are not able to afford the expensive and original ones. Those rip-offs, carry within those products a strip of the main companies’ carefully planned designs, but not to such an extent as to actually threaten the copyright protection availed by the companies, to attract the customers, thereby once again emphasising the importance of designs.

Designs are created. Those designs tend to be the face of several industries. They must be original, and must carry an idea, that forms the core aim or goal of the industries. One of the peak industries where AI is of higher usage is the Fashion Industry. AI is creating the designs, directly and indirectly, which would have a brand value in these industries, with ease, by analysing trends, the future prospects and various other probabilities. They are systematically trained, with further consistent outputs, to analyse the fashion trends existing in the society to create a highly viable result that would be loved by the people. There is scepticism regarding the ownership of the fashion designs, which has the ability to create quite a stir in those industries. Who owns these designs which could be or are the face of these brands? Is it the AI programme or the ones who uses the tools to create a new design to cater the trends? This article tries to analyse the role and consequences of AI algorithms in the creation of designs and lays out further effects of such creation in the realm of ownership and copyright. This article analyses the current dilemma and follows through on how to deal with this conundrum and ends with recommendations in relation to the matter, through the source of secondary data.

BACKGROUND IN THE AI-BASED FASHION DESIGNS: CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

Current trends suggest that AI would be a central feature in the fashion industry, mainly, one of the reasons being that in this era, fashion is basically online-oriented, fetching consumer insights and their interests in such close variables, enabling the AI algorithms to be trained in such a way to produce the designs that would drive up the markets. Basically, what is being carried out is that these AI designs are further, without any hindrance, being used to train the AI models, which would be training the sets. This is another issue which could also be incorporated within, since in the backdrop of lack of ownership, there exists a situation of infiltration of the influence of the design on the design requested to be generated by another brand designer, which would lead to another feud. Moreover, there still exists a massive confusion regarding the permission aspect in the usage of consumer data for the training of AI models. AI further provides predictive forecasting, market insights and the current trends sets, which would give information to the brands as to what they should produce, not limited to the designs they have to incorporate. AI trends in these past years include the following from the mass of innovations:

• Fashion trend forecasting is the basic foundation of every further initiative in the industry. AI algorithms are able to find out what constitutes a trend at the current time and what could be a huge trend in the future later on. Brands rely on historical data and analytics to predict further, and the algorithms even analyse the colour palette changes through social media pictures.
• Fashion brands are using AI generative tools to create designs, prints or even a whole new collection. They are produced through the analytics of the what constitutes current catch and by predicting future trends. The work that costed a lot more endless days of continuous and tireless efforts, are now being done with a single click and the collaboration between manual labour and technical labour. The human creativity could deal with the brand aesthetics and identity, while the AI could cater to the design needs of the brands which would align with what the generation is finding as ‘cool’. These AI tools are not simply creating designs, they are providing a blueprint for the brands to consider, which is in tune with what the society likes. It amplifies to the existing trend further by adding to the them and creating one.

Platforms that are built particularly for fashion, throw light on this balance of creativity and automation, through the ways mentioned below:

• Fashwellpioneered AI visual search and auto-tagging, now reaching millions of people through Apple integrations since 2018.
• Styliticshelps retailers scale outfitting and bundling, improving product presentation.
• ai(formerly ZMO.ai) generates on-model imagery from a single product photo, while tools like Pixyle.ai and ViSenze bring reliable visual recognition and tagging, simplifying catalogue management.
• Mercer(formerly CALA) serves as a fashion operating system, connecting creative direction, AI-assisted design, and supply chain execution in one place.[1]
• Customers are in need of more personalised designs rather than general prints, based on their features, body type and face, since designs do highlight a person, when they wear the right design and the kind of clothing with those designs. These AI tools often suggest the producers as well, who produce the specific type of designs and clothing, what the specific consumer is inclined towards. By people often being in a situation where they do rely on these tools to suggest the styles based on their looks, it provides an incentive to the producers. StitchFix and Zalando are the leading examples for that. These use consumer preferences and analytics to suggest looks tailored to your style.
• Market Knowledge is one of the key areas that any producer ought to take into consideration before producing and launching their products. These AI tools analyse the markets for the brands, giving them enough details to create products catering to the needs of those people, based on geography, demographics, consumption patterns, and consumer behaviour. etc.
• Sustainability is one of the most important concerns of any producer these days, and especially in the fashion industry, this issue is not forgotten. AI-driven tools provide suggestions to reduce waste, help produce sustainable produce, improve supply chain management, and prevent overproduction.
• AI is a big boon to small creators. These days, print on demand is a highly preferred choice, since people prefer to have the prints of their liking on their choice of clothing. Based on the ongoing trends, people can get their preferred choice of print from these platforms that sell such products. They use the help of AI-driven forecasting to understand what constitutes the ‘consumer need’ and then all they have to do is make the cloth with the print. Since AI produce designs too, they can be used to understand what people like and then reproduce something original and untouched, which can be used by these brands to print on the clothing, thereby successfully constituting an example where hard work meets smart work.

AUTHORSHIP BATTLES AND CASE STUDIES

Authorship battles mainly focus on whether the AI-generated works can be registered, have originality and could qualify for the same. In 2025, luxury brand Balenciaga sued an AI firm for creating a design that was nearly identical to their FALL 2024 collection. EU’s AI Act, which was proposed to be effective from 2024, mandates full AI usage disclosure, which lacks enforcement as of now. In the Indian context, India’s Copyright Act, 1956, remains silent on AI generated contents, while many generative tools still misuse the existence of the loophole, and so do the other South Asian Countries. A key battle took place when Shein’s independent designers moved against Shein, who used their sketches to train Shein’s pattern generator to produce uncanny rip-offs, which were sold at scale.

The key cases include: Balenciaga v. AI Startup (2025), Shein Designer Suits (2025), USCO v. AI Art (2023), etc.

OWNERSHIP DILEMMAS

The question still remains: Who owns these designs? The developer or the user? It creates an atmosphere that gives the message that human creativity could be replaced. Even if the AI usage were to support the users for building up a catchy design for the brand to claim the market, it never takes away the probability that in the future, AI could entirely take over the human efforts in the creation of something which is the face of these brands. Therefore, creating a boundary over ownership for the purpose of copyright is of greater significance from a future-oriented point of view.

In the fashion industry, the designs are protected through copyright. This provides the safety for these brands, and it is also one of the key reasons that takes the consumers to the markets to buy their clothing with these designs, which constitutes a mark of prestige. For example, the Burberry checks, Toile Monogram patterns (of Louis Vitton), etc. These showcase a mark of luxury, which is what a big section of society looks forward to when they buy the products. Therefore, copyrighting these key designs has an immense reason behind it.

From the perspective described above, AI software or the developers, should not be made the owners of the designs, until and unless they have an express agreement between the user and the former, that they hold the entire or part ownership for the designs they generate. Since in the current scenario, such an agreement, explicitly or implicitly is not created most of the time, or the developers do not promote it, it could be taken to imply that these AI software does not have ownership and they cannot be registered for copyright. Current legal consensus holds that purely AI-generate contents cannot be copyrighted because it lacks human authorship.

If a human uses an AI software to produce these designs, they should prove that there has been significant contribution from the side of the person to generate the design. If so, then the ownership lies with the designer. But if a user generates a design using a “black box” system with minimal input, the terms of service (ToS) of the platform (e.g., Midjourney, DALL·E) usually dictate ownership. Most platforms grant commercial rights to the user, but these rights may be limited, and the AI company may hold underlying rights. The prevailing trend favours a hybrid approach: AI tools generate, but human oversight secures ownership. The more a human directs, selects, and modifies the output, the stronger their claim to IP ownership.[2]

RECOMMENDATIONS

These are some of the recommendations that help with the current dilemma with AI:

1. There should be an amendment to the laws. Many IP laws of the world are still operating without incorporating AI, which is indeed a significant development. As we have already seen, AI is changing the way different sectors work, which really needs monitoring, and for this purpose, it needs to be incorporated into the laws of the countries, which are devoid of that aspect.
2. There should be a limit to the aid of AI in the generation of designs. For the safeguarding of the element of human creativity and originality, AI should be used to a limited extent for producing designs that are going to be the face of a dress or a clothing collection. To make sure that, the laws must incorporate a clause which limits the usage of AI aid to a demarcated limit, to be used to create a design by and for the brand, and to be ultimately copyrighted.
3. The generated content, which surpasses the said limit in the act, should be declared as owned by the software to an extent, which would clearly reduce to a considerable extent the influence of the designer and the brand in the design. This situation, indirectly would lead to a considerable reduction in the over-usage of AI for such generative purposes and further would ensure clearly that the clouds of confusion are removed in the case of ownership and copyright.
4. Brands should use ‘AI Disclosure Badges’ to give information to the consumers, leading to more transparency.

CONCLUSION

The fashion industry is getting intensely competitive these days. With the inclination towards expanding the business and gaining the trust and hearts of the customers, it would make them want to create something that would have the capacity to capture the likeness of people. For this purpose, these days, people rely on AI, especially because of their accuracy and speed, to analyse the trends of the time and produce some designs that would attract people. This, in prima facie, might seem innocent and as a temporary abode, but in the long run, a problem is created, which would become very difficult to deal with later on. The issue, in dealing with ownership and copyright, will be treacherous enough to think of as simple and trivial. Therefore, it requires the consultation of the minds of the lawmakers to decide and resolve these issues, with clearly specified details and provisions, that would definitely incorporate the current changing situations, therefore, giving a sense of security to the designer and the fashion brands.

REFERENCE(S):

[1] Printful, ‘AI Fashion Trends’ (Printful Blog) <https://www.printful.com/blog/ai-fashion-trends\> accessed 5 March 2026.

[2] Archana Shukla, ‘AI vs. Artistry: Indian Copyright Law at a Crossroads for Fashion Designers’ (KnallP, 2025) <https://knallp.com/ai-vs-artistry-indian-copyright-law-at-a-crossroads-for-fashion-designers/\> accessed 6 March 2026.