The integrity of the contemporary art ecosystem can be subverted by users of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, now easily and cheaply accessible, who produce and market images of questionable authenticity. A recent controversy has arisen concerning a dealer’s GenAI use of work by Ansel Adams, the US landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West from the 1920s to his death in 1984.
Adams’s most popular image is Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941. In the 1970s, he made over 1,369 unique Moonrise prints, mostly in 16″ x 20″ format, sales of which gave him lifelong financial independence from commercial projects. The total value of these original monochromatic prints exceeds $25m, with the highest resale price for a single print fetching $609,600 at Sotheby’s, New York City, in 2006.
US-based photography dealer, James Danziger, used GenAI to make a ‘colourized’ version of Moonrise, which he first showed in April 2026 at The Photography Show’s annual fair in New York City. He offered for sale three differently sized editions of ten, at $6,000, $8,000 and $10,000; whilst the Ansel Adams Gallery, run by the artist’s grandson, was then offering a unique print of the original Moonrise for over $100,000.
The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust (AAPRT), which manages the artist’s intellectual property rights and print production, had not authorised Danziger’s GenAI coloured reproduction. AAPRT asked Danziger to take down the work and cease offering his editions for sale: he did not comply. After further researches, the trust concluded that Danziger ‘leveraged Ansel’s name, Moonrise and the [art fair] presentation’ to push a commercial venture to colour works from other artists’ estates using GenAI.
In May 2026, AAPRT condemned Danziger’s GenAI enterprise in a social media post, alleging that he ‘exploited Ansel’s name, reputation and his most iconic image, while failing to identify any human artist responsible for its creation … concerns are not about AI or creative experimentation in the abstract … this is fundamentally about artists’ rights and moral rights and respect for human dignity’.
Days later, Danziger published a statement seeking to justify his actions. Evidently guided by an art lawyer’s advice, Danziger pre-empted potential legal action by AAPRT, with a series of assertions: the image is in the public domain and not protected by copyright; even if the image is copyright-protected, his GenAI coloured rendition satisfies the ‘fair use’ defence of ‘transformation’ permitted by US copyright law; and, if legally transformational, the ‘fair use’ doctrine also permits editions of the new version to be exhibited and sold.
US copyright protection of Moonrise is at the legal heart of this matter. Danziger and his art lawyer are probably correct in asserting that copyright in the image has expired. On 1 June 1978, when the current US Copyright Act 1976 came into force, complex transitional provisions were made for photographs published between 1931 and 1963: copyright would last for a first term of 28 years from first publication, could be renewed for a second 28 year term and, if renewed, copyright would endure for 95 years. In 1942, Adams gave an original print of Moonrise to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which was published by US Camera in 1943. The official US copyright renewals database has no record of renewal by 1970, after which date the first and only 28 year copyright term for Moonrise would have expired – placing it in the US public domain.
In the UK and most other European countries, for fine art photographers of Adams’s generation, the length of copyright in their published images is calculated more simply, typically enduring for 70 years post-mortem – with no renewal. UK photographer Bill Brandt and Adams were professional peers, born two years apart, dying within four months of each other: Brandt in December 1983, Adams in April 1984. Under UK copyright law, Brandt’s copyrights endure until 31 December 2053. Brandt is widely considered to be one of the most important British photographers of the 20th century, being well-known for his landscapes and portraits of famous artists.
Consider, for example, Brandt’s well-known black-and-white 1966 shot of a bowler-hatted René Magritte, staring intently at the camera while holding up one of his iconic paintings, Le fils de l’homme (The Son of Man), 1964. The Bill Brandt Archive (BBA) is a UK-registered company that manages his estate, exclusively handling all reproduction and licensing rights for his images, and typically requiring licensing fees and permissions for commercial or publishing uses. If Brandt’s Magritte portrait were subject to coloured reproduction similar to Danziger’s treatment of Moonrise, editioned and marketed today without BBA’s licence, such use is likely to have violated Brandt’s copyright. However, if BBA brought such a lawsuit, it could be defended by claiming that UK copyright law permits ‘fair dealing with a work for the purposes of caricature, parody or pastiche’. Courts decide whether a work’s treatment is a parody or pastiche and, if so, is also a fair dealing.
The UK’s only authoritative judicial ruling on such a defence was made by London’s Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in 2022. The case concerned the well-known 1980s BBC television comedy, ‘Only Fools and Horses’: its characters, catchphrases, themes and other material are copyright-protected. That material was appropriated, without permission, to create and market an immersive theatrical dining experience, ‘Only Fools The (cushty) Dining Experience’: in hotel function rooms, audiences of around 100 were served a three-course meal, and actors portraying the original sitcom’s characters interacted spontaneously with diners. The aim of the event was to make audiences feel they were in the presence of the characters they knew and loved from the sitcom; and were immersed in ‘a similar imaginary universe’ to that created by the original show.
The dining experience producers denied copyright violation, maintaining that their event amounted to parody or pastiche, and was fair dealing. The court ruled that the producers’ show was neither a parody nor pastiche, as those terms are properly understood, but a mere imitation; and that in any event the defendants’ acts did not constitute fair dealing.
Ironically, the facts of this case, and its authoritative judicial decision on fair dealing for parody or pastiche purposes, give the lie to the old Cockney saying that ‘only fools and horses work’- get-rich-quick plagiarists and schemers, chancers and grifters, beware.
© Henry Lydiate 2026