What is an AI restriction clause and should you include it in your creative services and work-for-hire contracts?

Creative Contracts 101 is a series of legal education posts for independent artists, creative professionals and cultural workers, simplifying reading, drafting and negotiating key agreements in the global creative economy. 

At the outset, let me share that the idea for this blog post was heavily inspired by a compelling instagram carousel by graphic designer and content creator, Klaudia aka @soexcitednow about how designers, illustrators and all creative professionals need to be increasingly mindful about adding clauses to contracts that protect their work from being given to AI models and tools, by clients. I am especially thankful to my friend, Sana Nasir aka @koi_nahi – an incredible artist, illustrator and art director, for having tagged me in Klaudia’s post. 

(You can learn more about Sana Nasir here – I can’t recommend her work enough)

Why do artists need to think about AI restriction clauses? 

Regardless of where you stand on the use of AI, there’s no denying that the increasing availability of AI tools and AI generated art, has had a profound impact on the creative economy, reshaping the way independent artists and creative professionals are expected to work and earn their livelihood. 

In this post, I am not debating the pros and cons of AI on the creative economy. That’s for another time. For now I will acknowledge and invite you to accept the reality that many independent and freelance artists continue to lose jobs and opportunities to AI alternatives. 

Typically, artists and creative professionals working on a work-for-hire basis aren’t considered the legal authors of what they create. That means they usually don’t retain rights in the work; the employer or client becomes the full owner. But when artists sell or license their rights instead of working for hire, they are recognized as the legal authors, and they may still have certain usage permissions and conditions tied to their work.

(If you’re curious about the different basic rights ownership and usage models available to artists and creative practitioners, I’ve broken them down in an easy explainer here.)

Now layer AI onto this picture. Even if AI isn’t creating the very first expression, it absolutely has the power to reproduce, remix, and regenerate similar or derivative works. And that’s where things get tricky: in that process, how much is the original artist really part of the creative and financial flow of what they created in the first place?

Equally worrying is what happens when AI is used to modify or “improve” an artwork without the artist’s permission. Does that effectively replace their contribution? Does it erase the original creative effort?

And finally, there’s a simple but deeply important question: what if an artist just doesn’t want their work showing up in AI training datasets at all?

What does an AI restriction clause look like? 

An AI restriction clause is meant to address the questions posed above i.e the question of whether an artist wants to allow their original work to be reproduced, modified, edited, revised or used to train models, by AI. 

Below is a draft version of an AI restriction clause that you can tweak and modify to use in your own agreements. My caveat here is that you should still seek legal counsel if you want to understand this clause or any legal topics shared here. I will also add that having a clause in your contract is by no means a final solution to the above posed challenges or questions – but it can be a step in the right direction to help artists and creators reclaim control over their creative expression. 

AI non-training and non-use clause: 

“The Client agrees that the Work, in whole or in part, shall not be modified, altered, edited or reproduced by any artificial intelligence tools. The Client further agrees that the Work, in whole or in part, shall not be used to train, fine-tune, develop, or otherwise be input into any artificial intelligence systems, machine learning models, or automated data-processing tools. The Client understands and agrees not to authorize any third party to use the Work for such purposes. Any use of the Work in violation of this clause shall constitute a material breach of this Agreement.”

Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only. It does not constitute actual legal advice or create a lawyer-client relationship between you and Artistik License or Manojna Yeluri.