Dear Sean,

AI tools promise speed, and therefore efficiency, but many operate in ways that blur ownership and reuse visual language, raising concerns around intellectual property and liability. As a studio principal—and as an educator who also teaches visual techniques—I’m grappling with how to adopt these tools responsibly while protecting original design authorship and setting the right professional standards for both practice and education. How can interior design studios use AI to improve efficiency and bottom-line drafting and visualization without compromising authorship, copyright or accountability for their work?

Feeling Conflicted

Dear Feeling Conflicted,

A recent BOH article did such a great job of laying all of these issues out, and I encourage you to appreciate the conversation raised there. The question I think you really need to grapple with is less about focusing on compromising authorship and more about acknowledging what lies underneath.

Marketing and leadership expert Seth Godin recently wrote a wonderful post about who receives what for music created, and how the issues we struggle with today are rooted in decisions made 80 years ago. Who deserves compensation for what part of creation is fraught—and it has been for a long time. Even if we could figure out who should get compensated for each part of your use of AI’s algorithm, it is not clear how much and why. Value is debatable no matter what. Does the sofa make the design? Or is it the relationship of the sofa to the pendant in the kitchen? How do you tell if that is what was taken? The real issue is the difference between Vanilla Ice’s use of David Bowie and Queen’s bass line and piano chords from “Under Pressure” for “Ice Ice Baby”—a literal case of stealing, like lifting a sofa from another designer—and Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke’s use of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” for “Blurred Lines,” which is more about flow. It’s a hornet’s nest to be sure.

What AI does is blur all of these ideas such that we are in the quagmire of acknowledgement and the presumption that there is ownership (and compensation due) from the pieces used. However, I truly believe there is nothing wholly original in this world, and we all stand on the shoulders of what has come before.

Copyright law is based on the notion that you cannot steal ideas, and that if you come up with the idea independently, it is not stealing. (Look up Disney’s case about Zootopia—which it won despite having received a similar treatment by the great screenwriter Gary Goldman, titled “Zootopia”—to see this line of thought in action.) The practice, then, is not to ignore AI as a critical component to the success of your design business on all levels. We have reached the point where being a Luddite is not only inappropriate, it is malpractice. Instead, your mandate should be to use AI to build better.

To the extent that your work is specifically resting on elements that must be acknowledged as other (Vanilla Ice) or has the underlying foundation even if not specific (Thicke and Williams), you have to acknowledge the same, but that is where it has to end.

Your take on the work has to then be given its due as what truly matters. A caveat: To those who would steal and use AI to define their work, these designers deserve all the pain coming to them. Stealing is stealing. However, using what has come before as a piece of what is being created is a uniquely human endeavor. If you use an oversize leaning mirror, I highly doubt you will credit Vicente Wolf for its introduction over 50 years ago—nor should you. Instead, you should use the technique as a component to your story. AI just increases this idea times a thousand.

Just like the greatest CGI will never ensure a blockbuster movie, the same is true of AI and all of the tools it provides designers and clients alike. The story matters, always.

Without dismissing the many issues surrounding AI, copyright and payment rights, I implore you to focus on what AI means to all designers. Principally, two things: First, being the regular kind just better is a death sentence. AI can and will only get better at aggregation and integration. Want to have a Bunny Williams master bathroom mixed with a Barry Dixon master bedroom? AI will do that in seconds, better than you ever could. Second, because of the first, the floor is raised for all designers. If clients can ask the right questions—and you’d better believe they will be taught to ask the right questions—they will get “pretty” and “stylish” in spades. AI will force every designer to find their way to beautiful. Oh, and you will have to use AI to get there.

To ground this for you, why would you hire a photographer to shoot your interiors? Yes, some have relationships with media, but that is so not why. The reason is that they create what you cannot, despite the fact that your tool to do so is every bit as good as theirs. Do not make the mistake of ignoring the tool or, worse, thinking the tool is what matters. Only the person using it does.

You can hold both things: The shoulders of giants need to be acknowledged if your work is truly derivative of theirs; in 99.9 percent of real design, though, it is simply the foundation for a higher platform that allows for a depth of authenticity and expression we have not yet seen. The digital image reached that point long ago and continues today. Your turn.

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Sean Low is the go-to business coach for interior designers. His clients have included Nate Berkus, Sawyer Berson, Vicente Wolf, Barry Dixon, Kevin Isbell and McGrath II. Low earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and as founder-president of The Business of Being Creative, he has long consulted for design businesses. In his Business Advice column for BOH, he answers designers’ most pressing questions. Have a dilemma? Send us an email—and don’t worry, we can keep your details anonymous.