You cannot copyright AI logos, logos modified or derivative from AI. That alone should scare you, but a lot of organizations ARE, in fact, using AI to generate, modify or change logos before they’re going back to their designers for “finishing touches”. And you can’t copyright any of it. The actual copyright code states that any works that do not have substantial human creation are not eligible and in fact, you can only register the parts of your work that were human-created.
What does this mean in practicality? I had an organization (not a client) present to the board a new logo, created with AI prompts by one member (who is an engineer by trade, not a designer) and I stopped the process because we intend to register this logo – as our original logo was copyrighted back in the 1980s.
If you want to retain your own brand copyright, you must have it designed by a human, or it’s not eligible for registration. Why might that be?
AI at it’s foundation uses the works created by others to create new derivative works. Because of this, you may have already infringed on someone else’s brand by letting the AI create your own, so therefore, it’s not allowed. Makes total sense, you don’t want someone creating a logo very similar to yours because the AI scraped the web and presented it as an iteration.
Why you should work with a designer even if AI wasn’t a thing?
Designers see the world a little different. Most or all of them have a unique ability to see combinations of creativity and express a visual concept not only with skills (e.g. Adobe Illustrator) but with the idea generation behind it. And those of us who are a “fountain of ideas” (I liken it to a really vigorous fountain, one that I could hardly control for most of my design life), this fountain happens almost without us thinking about it. I don’t get “blank page paralysis” (though I know designers and writers who do). I do now know it’s my neurospicy brain (a whole generation of people are discovering this now that our kids are being diagnosed with ADHD and AuDHD and other neurospicy brain functions.) I never thought of my energy and ideas as anything more than good, or at least, a mild annoyance (it’s hard to shut the brain off.)
A designer brings EMOTION to the brand. If they’re good, you should say “yeah, that’s exactly the feeling I was going for!” when they get it right. It’s not the same with AI, though you can get the look, there is a subtle but important difference with the feeling of a brand. Prompts don’t help you do this. Human creativity does.
So, two big takeaways with how you should have your logo created WITHOUT AI:
- You cannot legally copyright an AI or AI-derivative logo and
- You deserve to have an emotional, beautiful and unique brand designed by a human being
With that, go find yourself a designer (hey, that’s me!) who can design your logo, craft your brand and shape your success through creativity and joy (and it truly IS a joy!)
AI flyers suck and other important items
AI flyers are so distinctive…. and bad, we can all identify them. Apparently AI speak is coming to business mouths near you (already), because we’re not only both used to hearing our agents talk like that but the AI agents learn from what we’ve already put out there. AI generated marketing just looks…bad. Clunky, shiny, too much crap in it. This is why you need a designer. We can pare things down to their most elemental nature, and then add in only what’s right, guide the viewer to the right information in the right order (yes, did you know we do that?)
Decades ago there used to be a graphic design magazine called Before & After. It took common things (flyers among them) and showed designers HOW a redesign worked, so you could then redo your own designs and learn at the same time. As a young designer, I devoured (and saved) these, and then, later, would be able to do that to my own work, a lifetime of learned experience on improving design. THAT is what you get when using a designer, versus an AI. Is it terrible to use an AI flyer? No. Does it look like every other AI flyer? You betcha. Be unique! Use a designer.