Powell’s Books, one of the most well-known bookstores in the nation, has learned the hard way that what goes into the design of a promotional product can be just as important as what it looks like, especially if your customer base is passionate about the creative arts.

  • Customers began posting on Reddit that the Portland-based shop’s recent T-shirts featured images that seemed to potentially have used AI to create its art.
  • Powell’s Books confirmed that it had hired a local artist who utilized AI software to create the image of a wolf standing on a stack of books, which is designed to look like it’s hand-drawn.


Considerable backlash followed from customers and fans, who felt that the use of AI not only takes work from artists, but also can steal original art from artists without credit and payment, passing it off as original.

The bookstore responded to the criticism over the weekend on Facebook, stating that it took the original work of artists seriously and claiming that the artist hired had used Adobe to create the image, which included AI-assisted features.

AI Art’s Perception As Theft

Many people freely use AI generators to create images, but there is also a strong and growing perception that such images represent the theft of artwork by real human artists.

  • In order to generate those images, AI tools are trained on millions of images of human-made art, creating a database that allows them to mimic human styles with accuracy. Sometimes, this results in intense similarities, and often it’s employing a signature style that a specific human had perfected and built a context and reputation around.
  • AI tools rely on “fair use” laws, which allow them to take from copyrighted artists’ work as long as it doesn’t impact the original work’s value in a provable way.


Experts have suggested that employing this use of “fair use” is operating in a considerable gray area that has not previously been tested.

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“These models are training on everyone’s work without their authorization,” Kevin Madigan, senior vice president of policy and government affairs at the Copyright Alliance, an advocacy group for copyright holders, told Fast Company. “They have the capability to supplant the need for human created work in the marketplace, which is one of the reasons we argue that it should not be considered fair use to use those things.”

Powell’s Books’ own union, ILWU Local 5, responded to the controversy with a Facebook post, condemning the bookshop for what it deemed as an easily avoidable error by the bookstore.

A company whose entire business model is dependent on human creativity should be safeguarding against any technology that exploits, devalues or displaces it.”

Powell Book’s Union, ILWU Local 5

“A company whose entire business model is dependent on human creativity should be safeguarding against any technology that exploits, devalues or displaces it,” ILWU Local 5 posted.

For now, promo companies can use AI-generated images and are protected under fair use laws (assuming they’re not breaking any other copyright laws), but their clients should note that certain customer bases in the creative arts consider the use of such artwork to be gauche, especially when attempting to promote the creative work of actual humans.

Earlier this month, Anthropic AI settled a lawsuit for $1.5 billion to a group of authors for illegally using their books to train its systems under the claim of fair use.”