ABSTRACT
When generative AI systems allow users to prompt the name of a well-known artist and instantly generate images in that artist’s recognizable style, the resulting outputs may function as market substitutes for human authorship. The harm does not lie in copying any single work, but in the systematic reproduction of expressive patterns that identify an author across an oeuvre. Existing copyright doctrine struggles to address this phenomenon because it focuses on output-level similarity rather than on the upstream practices that enable expressive substitution at scale. This Article introduces the concept of surrogate-style to describe this dynamic.
A signature-style reflects a durable, author-specific expressive identity forged through time, judgment, and social recognition. By contrast, generative AI systems produce surrogate-styles: stylistic simulations that extract expressive value without undergoing the developmental, personal, or normative processes traditionally associated with authorship. Surrogate-style is therefore not rivalrous imitation among human creators, but a form of surrogate extraction – the appropriation of value generated under conditions of human agency while bypassing those conditions.
Departing from accounts that treat AI training as non-consumptive or normatively neutral, the Article reframes training on copyrighted works as the legally salient act when it functions as extraction rather than analysis. It evaluates existing doctrinal pathways-including merger, moral rights, ‘look and feel’ analysis, plagiarism norms, trademark law, and unfair competition – and explains why each gestures toward, but ultimately fails to resolve, the problem of surrogate-style when considered in isolation.
The Article proposes a regulatory response that preserves copyright’s foundational limits while addressing expressive substitution at scale. Rather than recognizing a property right in style or prohibiting imitation, it proposes treating certain forms of AI training as a regulated use, supported by opt-in or statutory licensing mechanisms, transparency obligations, and tiered remedies. In doing so, the Article situates surrogate-style within a broader jurisprudence of extraction, with implications extending beyond copyright to other domains in which law confronts systems that simulate the outputs of human agency while hollowing out its social foundations.
Friedmann, Danny, Signature-style (March 15, 2026).
Leave a Reply