Authorship in the Age of the Algorithm: Process, Assertion, and the Secretarial Machine

Don Parker, Associate Professor of Design Thinking and Innovation, University of Bristol

Introduction

My practice as an artist and academic operates at the intersection of analogue and digital forms, encompassing painting, film, photography, graphic design, and artificial intelligence. For more than three decades, I have worked across this continuum, using brushes and cameras, Adobe software, and now generative systems, to explore how creativity manifests in a world saturated with replication. The recent expansion of AI image and text generators has reignited longstanding anxieties about originality, prompting renewed debate about what constitutes authorship in an age of algorithmic assistance.

This essay argues that the critical distinction is not between “human” and “machine,” but between process and assertion. Process refers to the exploratory, iterative, and often private stages of creation: sketching, prompting, remixing, and discarding. An assertion describes the moment when a work is finalised, contextualised, and circulated. I contend that copyright, ethics, and authorship properly begin at the point of assertion, not within the experimental freedom of process. This essay develops that framework through reflection on my own hybrid practice, alongside analysis of copyright and publicity-right case studies.

Theoretical Framework: Fixation, Transformation, and Iteration

The idea of fixation remains central to copyright law, defining the moment when a creative work becomes tangible (Samuelson, 2007). Yet in a digital environment, where every keystroke can generate a duplicate, fixation has become conceptually unstable. Legal doctrine has struggled to decide whether a work is “fixed” when it first appears on screen, when it is saved to disk, or only when it is released to the public (Lessig, 2004). I argue that fixation alone is inadequate: what matters is assertion, the human act of selection and contextualisation that transforms fragments into authored works.

Transformation is equally crucial. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. (1994) confirmed that new meaning can constitute new authorship. More recently, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith (2023) narrowed this interpretation, especially for commercial contexts. Nonetheless, the principle endures: creative transformation, whether through collage, remix, or machine prompting, generates authorship when directed with intent (Boyle, 2008).

Finally, iteration, a concept central to design thinking, situates process as a dynamic cycle of experimentation, failure, and refinement. In innovation practice, iteration is not theft but learning (Brown, 2009). By extension, artistic process must remain a protected zone for exploration. To criminalise experimentation would be to regulate thought itself—what Benjamin (1936) warned against when he wrote of the mechanical reproduction of aura.

Methodology: AI as Secretarial Collaborator

This paper, and much of my recent work, has been developed using AI as a secretarial collaborator. I use systems such as ChatGPT and MidJourney to extend the drafting and visualisation phases of my process. The machine offers suggestions, produces fragments, and sometimes generates unexpected connections. Yet these outputs remain unstable until I intervene. Authorship arises not from generation but from curation: I decide which fragments to keep, how to transform them, and when to declare a work complete.

This methodological transparency is important. The use of AI here does not replace authorship; it makes authorship visible. Just as artists have long employed studio assistants, editors, or technicians, the algorithm functions as an accelerant within a human-led framework of intention and evaluation. The decisive moment remains the same: the point of assertion when I stand behind a work and release it into circulation.

Process and Assertion

Within this model, process is the field of possibility and assertion is the threshold of responsibility. Every artist engages in forms of duplication, studying predecessors, referencing styles, rehearsing gestures. None of this constitutes infringement until a work is finalised and circulated.

To treat every on-screen AI output as a potential copyright violation would conflate experimentation with publication. It would collapse thought into theft and turn studios into surveillance sites. Fixation, as noted above, is insufficient; it is assertion, the conscious act of claiming and circulating, that grounds authorship.

In my practice, this distinction has become performative. My paintings and films often begin as digital composites generated from prompts that reference mythology, memory, and cinematic atmosphere. These fragments are then re-worked by hand, through pigment, editing, and sound design. The resulting artefacts are not machine outputs but authored transformations. Authorship, as I understand it, is a dialogue between analogue intention and digital flux.

Case Study 1: Mickey Mouse: Corporate IP and Cultural Control

Mickey Mouse exemplifies the overreach of corporate intellectual property regimes. Copyright protects the drawings and animations that constitute Mickey, while trademark law protects the character as a brand identifier. The unaltered display of a Disney image online constitutes infringement, even if not sold. Yet transformation complicates this scenario. A re-imagined or critical depiction of Mickey could qualify as fair use under Campbell v. Acuff-Rose (1994), provided it adds new meaning.

However, Warhol v. Goldsmith (2023) demonstrates how commercial assertion can weaken such claims. In that case, the Supreme Court determined that Warhol’s silkscreens of Prince, though transformative in style, served a similar commercial purpose to the original photograph. Transformation alone was insufficient; assertion in a commercial context became decisive.

Trademark law introduces a further layer: under Moseley v. V Secret Catalogue, Inc. (2003), dilution through blurring or tarnishment may occur even without consumer confusion. For artists, this dual protection, copyright and trademark, creates an environment where cultural icons are policed far beyond their original creative intent. It is only at the point of assertion, when a work is offered publicly, that these legal mechanisms activate. Private experimentation remains beyond their reach.

Case Study 2: Arnold Schwarzenegger and “I’ll Be Back”: Persona, Phrase, and Context

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s association with the phrase “I’ll be back” illustrates another boundary between expression and assertion. Short phrases rarely qualify for copyright protection because of their brevity (Harvard Law Review, 2024). However, catchphrases can acquire trademark status if used commercially, as seen in Michael Buffer’s registration of “Let’s get ready to rumble!” (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, 1992).

Schwarzenegger also retains rights to his own image and voice through the doctrine of publicity rights. If he used “I’ll be back” in a neutral context, no infringement would occur. If he repeated it within a commercial advertisement styled after The Terminator, implying endorsement by the film studio, trademark or false-association claims could arise. Again, the issue emerges only at the moment of assertion, the point at which meaning, context, and circulation converge.

Discussion: Implications for Authorship and Creative Ethics

The Mickey Mouse and Schwarzenegger examples demonstrate how copyright and publicity frameworks are activated by assertion, not by process. Private prompting, rehearsal, or sketching, whether in a studio or through an AI interface, remains outside the domain of legal enforcement. The law intervenes only when a work is fixed, circulated, and attached to an authorial claim.

This distinction has profound ethical implications. Artists must be free to explore the materials of culture, its images, sounds, and symbols, without fear of pre-emptive policing. At the same time, assertion entails responsibility: to transform rather than replicate, to situate rather than exploit. The future of authorship lies not in rejecting digital tools but in cultivating discernment about when and how to assert.

My dual position as artist and academic at the University of Bristol allows me to test these ideas through both practice and pedagogy. Within the MA Digital Innovation programme, I encourage students to treat AI not as a replacement for creativity but as a collaborator in the iterative stages of making. The challenge is to move from mechanical production toward meaningful assertion, to locate the human act within the algorithmic flow.

Conclusion

Authorship in the age of the algorithm demands a reorientation from fixation to assertion. The creative process, especially when mediated by AI, should remain a space of freedom, ambiguity, and experimentation. Authorship begins when the artist assumes responsibility: selecting, transforming, and declaring a work complete.

In this sense, AI does not erode authorship; it exposes it. The machine generates possibilities, but authorship resides in the act of decision, in the moment of assertion. Process belongs to everyone. Assertion belongs to the author.

References

Benjamin, W. (1936) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Translated by H. Zohn. London: Penguin (2008 edition).

Boyle, J. (2008) The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Brown, T. (2009) Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. New York: HarperCollins.

Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. 510 U.S. 569 (1994).

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith 598 U.S. ___ (2023).

Harvard Law Review (2024) ‘Short Phrases and Copyright Thresholds in Digital Media’, Harvard Law Review, 137(4), pp. 889–912.

Lessig, L. (2004) Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin.

Moseley v. V Secret Catalogue, Inc. 537 U.S. 418 (2003).

Samuelson, P. (2007) ‘Unbundling Fair Uses’, Fordham Law Review, 77(5), pp. 2537–2621.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (1992) Registration No. 1,816,432, “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble.”