Protected works, unprotected meaning? Art, AI, and the limits of copyrigh Bartók’s source ethics in the age of AI
Gábor Soós
Abstract
The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has intensified fundamental questions at the intersection of art, new technologies, and
copyright. While copyright remains indispensable for protecting works, authorship, and certain economic interests, it does not fully address
the broader cultural and normative concerns raised by AI systems trained on, and operating through, vast bodies of artistic and
cultural material. This article argues that contemporary copyright debates should be situated within a wider inquiry into legitimacy, responsibility,
and cultural governance. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s reflections on aura and Béla Bartók’s ethos of the pure source, it
suggests that the central challenge of the AI age lies not only in protecting works, but also in safeguarding contextual meaning, communal
significance, and the integrity of the relation between cultural materials and their sources. Its distinctive contribution is a source-ethics
framework that connects provenance, contextual integrity, participation, traceability, and fair benefit-sharing as practical complements
to copyright.