𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Scheffler, who does not own a smartphone, said he tried to ignore AI until someone showed him how his most famous creations had been digitally recreated in locations such as Silicon Valley and Oktoberfest.

“I was quite shocked. It’s clearly my mouse, my Gruffalo, as close as they can do it, but the rest of the image is completely created – it’s a clear theft of copyright,” he told the BBC.

Scheffler is considering launching the legal action in Germany because he believes the European Union is more creator-friendly.

Nick Buckland, an intellectual property lawyer at London firm Lewis Silkin, agreed that Germany could offer a route for creators seeking to protect their work.

“There have been two cases in Germany where music collecting societies have been able to win against AI companies by showing that those AI companies have copied lyrics of songs verbatim and have presented them,” he told the BBC.

But proving copyright infringement could be difficult, he said.

While having a distinctive character such as the Gruffalo could help Scheffler’s case, he would need to establish that his copyright had been infringed.

“Generative AI doesn’t copy, it trains,” Buckland explained.

“This is what AI companies say means that they’re not infringing someone’s copyright.

“For example, if someone wants a picture of a dog, what the AI machine does is it scans everything it’s trained on, millions of pictures of dogs, and then one gets presented to the user.”