There have traditionally been seven types of art — painting, sculpture, literature, architecture, theatre, film, and music — all of which begin with human ideas.
However, now that artificial intelligence (AI) is being used more and more widely, the notion of seven significant forms of art has changed. AI can mix and match elements from different sources to produce entirely new ideas. It can produce images of places that have never existed, of people who have never been born, and moments that have never happened, risking human creation and raising major doubts about the ownership of ideas, creativity, and copyright.
Egypt’s Intellectual Property (IP) Law (Law 82/2002) remains largely unchanged when it comes to works produced by AI. However, lawyer Mahmoud Othman told Al-Ahram Weekly that “we urgently need new contract models that can serve as the foundation for practical applications” in the world of AI, referring to what the eminent 20th-century lawyer Abdel-Razek Al-Sanhouri did when drafting Egypt’s Civil Code.
“Al-Sanhouri recognised early on that artist contracts are naturally evolving and flexible, so he did not give them a fixed or standard form,” Othman said, adding that in Al-Sanhouri’s view customs and practices would naturally emerge to regulate them.
The law often builds on prior practices to shape legislation, and when legal provisions do not explicitly cover new developments, judges often rely on precedents to guide their decisions. “We show the court that there is a previous ruling that draws on the same relevant ideas, which means building on precedents to cover new cases and following a particular trend. The principle that ideas are not protected for copyright purposes has been a settled principle in Egypt since the 1940s, even before the intellectual property law was enacted,” Othman said.
However, AI has introduced new problems, and its use is subject to laws associated with it, like the Telecommunications Regulation Law (Law 10/2003) that addresses the management of digital data, a core element in AI operations. The Data Protection Law (Law 151/2020) also sets out rules on privacy and data use, imposing consent requirements that directly affect any AI system relying on personal information.
Under Egyptian Intellectual Property Law, if a filmmaker wants to include scenes from an Um Kolthoum concert, for example, in a new film there is no need to get the permission of the artist’s heirs because 50 years have passed since their original publication. However, if an advertisement uses a tune composed by Mohamed Al-Mougi, the timeline for protection begins with the death of the composer and continues for 50 years. Footage of news reports is not subject to copyright protection.
Othman added that folklore is in the public domain when the original creator of a piece is unknown, citing the anonymous song Nenaa Al-Geneina as an example. But things are more complicated when the individual disseminating the anonymous work is himself well-known. The song Bebah from Radwan Al-Kashef’s film Arak Al-Balaḥ is copyright, for example, because the popular vernacular poet Abdel-Rahman Al-Abnoudi first heard the song from his mother Fatma Qandil who had inherited it as part of her knowledge of Upper Egyptian folklore.
“As the public is familiar with the song through Al-Abnoudi, the lyrics are considered to be legally his, and the rights to the song now lie with his daughter Aya Al-Abnoudi,” Othman said.
Many of these distinctions about creativity, copyright, and ownership have been overturned by AI.
INTRODUCING AI: The principles of AI shed light on human imagination and make it easier to classify different kinds of creativity into three categories — combinational, exploratory, and transformational.
Exploratory is considered the most compatible with AI. Nevertheless, even in the case of the most advanced exploratory AI, there is still a significant human role. Humans have to establish the stylistic rules and parameters to direct the creative output of the system and thus are the ultimate judges. Even so, Othman adds that “creativity” in law differs from its ordinary meaning, and from a legal viewpoint ChatGPT, for example, could be classified as creative.
AI depends on the work of other authors and literary works before it can produce anything new. Its use of these without the permission of the authors can lead to copyright infringement, with one famous case being that of author George R.R. Martin, writer of the Game of Thrones books that were adapted into a TV series, who took legal action after AI large language models (LLMs) used his works without his consent.
“Artists today have become much more aware of issues related to videos and voiceovers,” Othman said. “When production companies request the use of an artist’s voice, they now often include articles in the contract granting them the right to edit the voice or overlay additional text. With these practices becoming more common, artists now insist on clearer limits in their contracts,” he said.
“If their lawyers refuse to allow vague articles in such contracts, others will follow the same approach, and over time rights will be better regulated in the market. Any contract must clearly specify how long the company can use an artist’s voice or image, how many works or advertisements it will appear in, and how much freedom the company has to modify it. This ensures that the artist fully understands their rights and avoids any form of exploitation.”
The use of AI for creating artwork has been explored for decades, however, and its early steps can be traced back to British artist Harold Cohen, who was the first to use AI in the visual arts in the 1970s.
Cohen intended to make a computer that could imitate his artistic procedures. He taught the computer how to create abstract images, which resulted in AARON, a programme that applied a collection of symbolic rules permitting it to create drawings independently of human input. Initially, AARON created straightforward black-and-white drawings, which Cohen later finished by hand and presented in exhibitions.
In the early 1980s, US musicologist David Cope’s AI experiments were able to compose music in the manner of famous composers like Bach and Mozart. Even though the results surprised many listeners, critics argued that Cope’s experiments in musical intelligence simply pieced together already known musical patterns without producing intentions or emotional depth similar to those of a human composer.
Theft and the misappropriation of creative works is a primary concern for many artists, though the issue is still not fully understood by many others. Fatma Abdel-Rahman, a scholar of sociology and philosophy, says that “many people think that if they tell a group about an idea and somebody else uses it to create something, then that is theft or forgery. In fact, millions of ideas live in our heads until they get some form of materiality on paper. It is like a certificate that proves who the real owner is so that he may defend and safeguard his property against all takers.”
In the same manner, works published on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok have already received this recognition. Even though these works are not recorded formally, their publication provides proof of ownership that can be ascertained from the date of publication and the reactions of audiences.
With the evolution of publishing technology, sources have become more available. Abdel-Rahman says that “at first, I was very much in favour of the copyleft licence [which grants users the freedom to use, modify, and distribute a work], especially in scientific research, where everyone should have the right to access the work of others without any obstacles. After all, knowledge is for everyone.”
“People share knowledge within certain ethical rules: if you benefit from someone else’s work, you should share what you learned; and if you develop it, don’t keep it for yourself,” she added.
“But how do we find a balance between free access to knowledge and the maintenance of its creative value?” Copyleft is inadequate because AI does not consider content as human work or creativity but rather as data. In addition, easy access leads to under appreciation: content is available online for everyone, and people often forget that behind each piece of information there is human work and creativity.
TRANSLATION: Another issue is translation, where translators are doing their best to get the acknowledgment they deserve.
Dina Mansour, an instructor in translation at the American University in Cairo (AUC), said that while “the writer of the original book owns the book, it’s the translator that owns the translated version.”
It is this that requires creativity. “The translator’s work is not limited to the mere substitution of letters and words but also involves attempting to capture the essence, the customs, and the images in the original text in a different language and cultural setting while at the same time retaining the mood of the original so that the audience is perceiving it the way the author intended,” Mansour said.
“For example, if a translator comes across a book called The Pink Bitterns Bird, they have to first figure out what that bird is, what it stands for, and why the author picked it as a title or a theme for the book. The translator cannot just translate the title literally without understanding the cultural context and the story behind it.”
“This shows that translation is the imaginative reconstruction of the message such that the new reader gets the intended meaning as if the text had been originally written in his or her mother tongue.”
“I consider ChatGPT to be simply a tool, much like Google Translate is, in the evolution of digital translation. For written translation, it can serve as a helpful resource, unlike for simultaneous interpreting, which relies solely on human skill.”
“I tell my students that the translation results given by ChatGPT may sometimes seem very good, but they are always accompanied by mistakes. The danger lies not in the tool but in the blind acceptance of its output. The translator should control it and ask for alternatives, and only the translator is able to check the meaning.”
This indicates that while the role of the translator may be reduced by AI, it will never disappear.
“If humans can’t understand some meanings, the same thing will happen with machines. The human input in translation will still exist, for instance for religious texts which are really hard for machines to translate. Each translation shows the translator’s progressive human understanding, which is influenced by an increase in knowledge rather than in technology. New interpretations become possible as human thought broadens and new insights arise. This development can make later translations richer, deeper, and better than earlier ones,” Mansour commented.
Members of the younger generations are trying out the use of AI tools as a means to boost creativity. But other young artists like Mohamed Khalaf of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Helwan University is going against the flow by promoting originality.
His piece Cherophobia, displayed at the Academy of Arts, is an artwork done without the help of artificial editing. The painting shows two female figures: the first keeps her eyes open, holding onto the hope that she might find happiness in life without sorrow following. The second has lost the meaning of sadness entirely and chooses to live in her depression, afraid of ever experiencing grief again.
“The painting was a product of a struggle I underwent during a very difficult period in my life. I was hesitant about which department to continue my studies in. It was a long journey until I reached photography, and I poured all my feelings into this painting,” Khalaf said.
“I am very excited about being part of the Academy of Arts exhibition. I believe real art comes from personal experiences rather than relying on AI or ChatGPT. I hope to inspire my generation and spark their curiosity about creativity,” he added.
Today’s rise of AI also mirrors the rise of previous forms of technology, such as the impact of the camera in the 19th century with the invention of the daguerreotype. Suddenly, it made capturing images easier, but it also sparked debates about the artist’s role in creating art, as some painters saw it as a threat to their painting.
Khalaf notes the similarity to our age of technology, adding that in his view AI, like photography in the past, can inspire artists and open new creative possibilities, but it cannot create the art itself.
“Signing a painting is very important to prevent theft. My professors have educated me to think that the Egyptian identity is important, so I keep my signature in Arabic. It should not be a scribble but a clear and readable mark,” Khalaf said.
“But a mobile phone is our strongest tool today. It lets us document and share our work on platforms like TikTok, making it impossible for anyone else to claim it.”
* A version of this article appears in print in the 15 January, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: