Designers: Is Your Style Protected from AI?

Designers: Is Your Style Protected from AI?

This fear is no longer theoretical. In the past two years, AI image-generation models have become so advanced that they can mimic a designer’s look, tone, line work, palette, repeat patterns and overall aesthetic with uncanny accuracy. People can now prompt an AI engine to “create a print in the style of a top Australian surface designer” or “generate a fashion illustration like a well-known designer’s runway sketches” — without permission, attribution or payment.

Writer Austin Kleon once observed, “The problem isn’t that artists steal. The problem is that machines don’t care what they steal from.”

And that is the uneasy truth: AI has no ethics, no context and no respect for the years it takes to develop a distinct, recognisable style.

And then we have designer Charles Eames who said that the details are not the details. They make the design. Well, yes but AI is now capable of absorbing those details — the signature flourish, the recurring motif, the bespoke texture — and reproducing them convincingly.

Is Style the New Legal Battleground?

Australian copyright law protects the actual expression of your creative work. That means the law applies to things you have physically created or fixed in some form — for example, a fabric print, a repeating pattern tile, a garment sketch, a brand illustration, a furniture design drawing or a graphic layout you have produced. These are all considered “expressions” because they exist as real, tangible works.

However, copyright does not protect your overall style, your artistic techniques or the general visual flavour that people might associate with your work. These things are viewed as broader, more abstract ideas rather than specific creations.

The reason for this comes back to what lawyers call the idea–expression dichotomy. In simple terms, Australian copyright law only protects the expression of an idea — the concrete work you make — and not the idea itself. Your concepts, stylistic choices, design themes or artistic approach cannot be owned in the same way a finished artwork or sketch can.

Light, camera, mood and style

So while your individual designs are protected, the law does not stop someone from creating new work that happens to feel similar in mood or style, provided they have not copied a substantial part of your actual design.

Australian copyright law draws a very clear line between what it protects and what it doesn’t. Your actual work — the piece you’ve created and fixed in a material form — is protected. For example, your original wallpaper print is covered by copyright because it is a specific artwork. But the broader idea behind it, such as “botanical line art with muted pastels,” is not protected in the same way.

The same applies to fashion. Your hand-drawn garment sketch is protected because it is a concrete creative work. But a general concept like “90s-style fashion illustration with elongated proportions” is simply too broad and too stylistic for the law to recognise as copyright-protected.

Furniture and product designers face the same distinction. Your custom furniture drawing is covered, because you’ve created a specific design. But a broad description like “minimalist wood-and-steel geometry” is an idea, and ideas themselves can’t be owned.

This “gap” makes it very easy for AI systems to copy a person’s style. People have long said that if you refuse to borrow from others at all, you end up creating nothing new.

The Loophole in Practice

In 2023, a well-known American illustrator discovered that her name had been used more than 32,000 times in AI prompts across several image-generation platforms. Fans and strangers were requesting “illustrations in her style,” and AI tools were producing artwork so similar to her signature line work and pastel-wash textures that even close friends struggled to tell the difference.

Nothing in the AI outputs was a direct copy of a single illustration — which meant copyright wasn’t clearly infringed — but her commercial commissions dropped noticeably. Potential clients told her, quite openly, “We can get AI to do your look for free.”

This case became widely discussed among designers globally because it highlighted the exact loophole: her distinctive style was being replicated, even if her actual works were not.

Surface Designers & Textile Artists

If you’re a surface designer or textile artist, you’re probably feeling the pressure more than most. AI loves patterns — it can analyse thousands of floral repeats, geometric motifs and textured tiles in seconds. Then, with a single prompt, it spits out a “new” design that looks eerily close to your signature style. The frustrating part? It may not copy any single tile directly, which means the law won’t necessarily see it as infringement… even if you feel like you’re staring at your own work with a few pixels shuffled around.

Graphic Designers

Graphic designers are facing their own version of this challenge. AI tools can learn your favourite typography pairings, your layout rhythm, your colour palettes and even the emotional tone of your illustrations. It doesn’t take long before a client jokingly (or not so jokingly) says, “Why hire a designer when AI can do it?”

But behind that throwaway comment is a very real worry: this isn’t just about aesthetics anymore — it’s about careers, creative identity and the future of design work.

Fashion Designers

Fashion designers are seeing something similar play out. AI can now generate entire lookbooks, mood boards and runway-style sketches that echo your distinctive silhouette or sketching style.

Your style is part of your brand DNA, and when AI imitates it, that uniqueness can start to blur.

Furniture & Product Designers

Even designers working in 3D aren’t immune. AI can mimic your shape language, proportion choices, joinery style and overall design personality. It may not reproduce your exact CAD file, but it can certainly recreate a “look” that took you years to develop.

And in a crowded market, where clients struggle to understand the difference between one minimalist chair and another, this kind of style mimicry can weaken your competitive edge — and your commercial value.

Why Designers Should Pay Close Attention to Australian Copyright Law

The key point is that the Australian Government has already decided not to introduce a rule that would have let tech companies freely copy huge amounts of online material, including design work, for AI training without permission.

Put simply: your designs are not automatically free for AI to use, big tech companies do not have a clear legal “yes” to copy your online portfolio, and you are in a better position to say “this is my work, you can’t just take it.” In short, the Government is being careful about AI and creative work, not just handing tech companies an open pass.

In short: the law isn’t perfect, but Australia is on the more protective end of the spectrum — and that’s something every designer should know.

How DesignWise Legal (powered by Sharon Givoni Consulting) Can Help

DesignWise Legal is the digital document arm of Sharon Givoni Consulting, a leading Australian intellectual property and creative-industries law firm with more than 25 years’ experience advising artists, designers and innovative businesses. While Sharon Givoni Consulting acts as the principal legal practice, DesignWise Legal focuses exclusively on legal templates and other resources for designers. 

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Please note the above article is general in nature and does not constitute legal advice.

Please email us info@iplegal.com.au if you need legal advice about your brand or another legal matter in this area generally.