Navigate the evolving AI copyright landscape effectively. Understand risks and harness AI with confidence in your business processes.image

AI Copyright Risks: What SMBs Must Know in 2026

Rights and Risks: The Battle for Copyright in the Age of AI – Royal Institute of British Architects Journal (What Business Leaders Need to Know in 2026)

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

  • The legal landscape surrounding AI-generated content is evolving rapidly, with increasing industry concern over copyright challenges.
  • The article “Rights and risks: the battle for copyright in the age of AI – Royal Institute of British Architects Journal” highlights critical intellectual property issues raised by generative AI tools.
  • Business owners and digital professionals must navigate new legal gray areas while leveraging AI to streamline their operations.
  • Legal precedents are still emerging, making proactive policy creation around data sourcing and content usage vital.
  • Learn how to ethically and effectively integrate AI into your workflows — and how services like AI Naanji can help.

Table of Contents

Current State of AI and Copyright

As generative AI tools become embedded into everyday business processes — powering creative design, automating content, and accelerating workflows — legal complexities around copyright are escalating. Businesses are increasingly caught in the crosshairs of innovation and intellectual property law.

In their article, Rights and risks: the battle for copyright in the age of AI – Royal Institute of British Architects Journal explores how architects, designers, and digital creatives face growing ambiguity when using tools that may borrow from or be trained on copyrighted materials. The central issue? Who owns what — and what rights are at risk?

This question isn’t just academic. For small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), marketing teams, and digital-first founders relying on tools like Midjourney, ChatGPT, or ElevenLabs, these unresolved copyright tensions could have real legal and financial implications.

In this piece, we’ll breakdown the current state of AI and copyright, explore what you must understand to navigate risks, and show how businesses can operate responsibly and effectively with AI-driven tools.

The core issue raised in the Rights and risks: the battle for copyright in the age of AI – Royal Institute of British Architects Journal is that AI tools rely heavily on vast datasets, often scraped from the public internet or licensed sources. These datasets sometimes include copyrighted work without explicit permission from the rights holders.

When an AI tool generates content — whether it’s a blog post, an audio clip, or an architectural rendering — that closely resembles or borrows from this source material, the legal ownership is murky.

Here are the core risks businesses need to consider:

  • Unauthorized Use of Copyrighted Content: AI tools like image generators or speech synthesis platforms might create outputs that infringe on existing IP, even unintentionally.
  • No Copyright Protection for AI-Generated Material: In many jurisdictions, machines cannot hold copyright, and their outputs may not be protected unless significantly modified by a human.
  • Liability for Users: Businesses using AI-generated content in commercial or public-facing assets could be held responsible, even if the infringement came from the model’s training data.

For example, tools like ElevenLabs audiobook platform provide lifelike narration, but if the base voice is trained using copyrighted performances, users might unknowingly step into infringement territory.

The lack of legal clarity leaves entrepreneurs exposed — making it vital to implement usage policies and choose AI vendors carefully.

Copyright law was not designed for algorithms.

Traditional frameworks assume a human creator with individual rights. With AI-generated material, authorship becomes unclear. Is it the user who prompted the AI? The developer who wrote the model? Or no one at all?

According to the Royal Institute of British Architects Journal’s feature, regulators around the world are scrambling to close this gap. In the U.S., the Copyright Office has declined registration of certain AI-generated works. Meanwhile, legal cases against companies like OpenAI and Stable Diffusion are underway for allegedly training models on copyrighted data.

Here are emerging trends to watch:

  • Lawsuits for Training Data: As seen in lawsuits against GitHub Copilot, lawsuits are focusing on the unauthorized use of copyrighted works during model training.
  • Push for Transparency: Legislators are increasingly insisting on AI providers disclosing the data sets used.
  • Hybrid Authorship Models: The EU and UK entertain the idea of recognizing co-authorship between AI and the human prompter in certain cases.

Businesses that produce large volumes of AI-assisted content — such as ecommerce startups generating product descriptions — must monitor these shifts closely. Compliance today is not just legal risk management but also reputation management.

Using Generative AI Without Legal Headaches

To continue benefiting from the speed and efficiency of AI without stumbling into copyright issues, digital professionals should follow a few practical principles:

Favor Tools with Transparent Training Data

Choose platforms that provide documentation of their training datasets or adhere to open-source and properly licensed data sets. For example, some providers offer enterprise plans that guarantee indemnification against copyright claims.

Ensure Human Oversight and Edits

Most authorities agree that significant human involvement can potentially turn AI-generated work into copyrightable, protectable output. Either way, human editing adds an important legal and creative layer.

Consider Licensing Agreements

For high-stakes assets (e.g., branding, commercials, flagship content), it may be worth licensing the final output from the vendor or creator, or insuring against intellectual property disputes.

Limit Use in Sensitive or Commercial Design Elements

Especially in architectural, fashion, or product design, business owners must be cautious when using AI to automate creative directions. As the Royal Institute of British Architects notes, derivative design work with unknown origins could affect legal liability and brand value.

Implementing Responsible AI Use

Here’s a step-by-step process for SMBs and marketing teams looking to deploy AI content responsibly:

  1. Audit Your Current AI Tools
    Make a list of platforms used in your business (e.g., ChatGPT, Midjourney, Descript) and evaluate them for transparency, data policies, and licensing structure.
  2. Review and Update Usage Policies
    Update your internal creative guidelines to include disclaimers and checks for AI-generated outputs, especially in published materials.
  3. Use “Human in the Loop” Workflows
    Mandate human review for any AI-generated text, imagery, or design. This both mitigates legal risk and improves output quality.
  4. Set Clear Use Cases
    Distinguish between internal use (efficiency, drafts, ideation) and external use (marketing, branding) when using AI content. Apply stricter vetting for the latter.
  5. Educate Your Team
    Run internal sessions or circulate documentation about copyright risks and ethical AI practices. Empower your staff with just enough legal context to make informed decisions.
  6. Consider Legal Counsel for High-Scale Use
    If your business heavily relies on generative AI, especially for client-facing content, invest in legal consultation to develop a compliance framework.

How AI Naanji Helps Businesses

At AI Naanji, we work with businesses to integrate AI and automation tools responsibly. Our services support:

  • n8n Workflow Automation: Build custom workflows that include legal checks, human review steps, and secure API calls to ensure traceability of content generation.
  • Tool Integration: We help choose and connect AI tools that prioritize responsible, transparent data usage.
  • AI Consulting and Governance Models: We assist businesses in developing internal governance policies for commercially safe AI use.

Whether you’re building an AI-powered content team or automating your operations, we help ensure your stack is both high-impact and rights-aware.

FAQ: Rights and Risks — The Battle for Copyright in the Age of AI

Q1: Do I own the content generated by ChatGPT or Midjourney?
Ownership depends on the terms of service of the platform and the degree of human involvement. In many jurisdictions, fully machine-generated content has no copyright unless significantly edited by a human.

Q2: Can my business be sued for using AI-generated images or text?
Yes. If the AI’s output reproduces or mimics protected material, your business can be held liable. Courts are still determining where responsibilities lie, but end users are not always shielded.

Q3: How can I protect my business from copyright violations in AI use?
Use platforms with disclosed training practices, retain human oversight, document your workflows, and avoid using AI content in legally sensitive contexts without vetting.

Q4: Are AI tools like ElevenLabs legally safe for commercial voiceover use?
Only if the models used are based on licensed data or the voice clone is permissioned. Always consult the platform’s terms and the licensing status before commercial deployment.

Q5: What does the Royal Institute of British Architects say about AI in design?
Their article highlights ethical and legal concerns around derivative works in architecture and creative fields, urging professionals to consider both originality and potential copyright breaches. Read the article here.

Conclusion

AI offers transformational opportunities — but with them come unresolved copyright questions. As highlighted in Rights and risks: the battle for copyright in the age of AI – Royal Institute of British Architects Journal, business leaders must tread carefully.

To thrive rather than merely survive in the age of generative AI, understanding your rights, obligations, and options is critical. At AI Naanji, we help businesses deploy AI that’s as responsible as it is powerful. Let us help you build intelligent, compliant systems that move your operations forward — safely.

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