Public talk on copyright in CGI as part of Telling Stories Fest
On May 12th at 7:00 PM, the HSE Art and Design School hosted a public talk titled «Copyright in CGI: Cinema, Advertising, Animation in the AI Era”—a discussion about who owns the rights to images generated by neural networks; how to protect your work and prompts when legislation has yet to regulate „machine creativity“; and where the line between borrowing and outright plagiarism is drawn.
At the public talk, «Copyright in CGI: Film, Advertising, Animation in the Age of AI, ” industry practitioners—including CGI artists, intellectual property lawyers, and neural network developers—discussed why your prompt alone does not guarantee copyright. They also covered how not to lose income due to this misunderstanding, what to do if a neural network generates a copy of your work from your personal portfolio. Furthermore, alongside the experts, they debated who pays for the use of AI in commercial projects (advertising, films, games), whether this can be stipulated in a contract, and whether it is worth registering copyright for CGI works today or if they risk becoming publicly available under the guise of „neural network training.“
Speakers
Alexey Kukharonok
Head of the CGI specialization in the «Animation, Illustration, Computer Graphics» major at the HSE Art and Design School. Computer Graphics Artist.
Dravi Koren
Producer and co-founder of the production company Sitnikov.pro. Expert in directing editing, DIT, DI, and the production of advertising and film post-production. Integrator of AI technologies for practical application in production and post-production pipelines.
Nikita Baranov
Co-founder and Creative Director at Mew Studio.
Sergey Frolov
CG Supervisor, Compositor. Worked at Canadian studios Pixomondo and Rodeo FX. Has worked on projects such as: «House of the Dragon, ” „John Wick, ” „The Witcher, ” „Penguin, ” „The Umbrella Academy, ” and „Sight.“
Date: May 12, 2026 Time: 7:00 PM–9:00 PM (Guest arrival at 6:30 PM) Location: Malaya Pionerskaya St., 12, Classroom 384