Left: “Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Johannes Vermeer” by Stable Diffusion Right: Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer
This specific one is not copyright violation as it is old enough for copyright to expire. But the same may happen with other images.
from https://alexanderwales.com/the-ai-art-apocalypse/ and https://alexanderwales.com/addendum-to-the-ai-art-apocalypse...
The scenes à faire doctrine would certainly let you paint your own picture of a pretty girl with a large earring, even a pearl one. That, however, is definitely the same person, in the same pose/composition, in the same outfit. The colors are slightly off, but the difference feels like a technical error rather than an expressive choice.
Warhol’s estate seems likely to lose and their strongest argument is that Warhol took a documentary photo and transformed it into a commentary on celebrity culture. Here, I don’t even see that applying: it just looks like a bad copy.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/10/justices-debate-whether-w...
It looks like it wouldn't in the UK, probably wouldn't in the US but would in Germany. The cases seem to hinge on the level of intellectual creativity of the photograph involved. The UK said that trying to create an exact copy was not an original endeavour whereas Germany said the task of exact replication requires intellectual/technical effort of it's own merit.
https://www.theipmatters.com/post/are-photographs-of-public-...
To make it concrete, imagine the latest Disney movie poster. You redraw it 95% close to the original, just changing the actual title. Then you sell your poster on Amazon at half the price of the actual poster. Would you get a copyright strike ?
This specific one would not be a problem, but doing it with a still copyrighted work would be.