The illustrator behind the popular children's book The Gruffalo has told BBC London he is "seriously considering" launching legal action against artificial intelligence (AI) firms he says breach copyright in reproducing his work. Axel Scheffler, whose illustrations have captivated children since 1999, said he wanted AI companies to stop using artists' work without permission. The Gruffalo, written by London-born children's author Julia Donaldson, tells the story of a mouse who outsmarts a beast.
"I've been in touch with a lawyer in Germany," Scheffler said. "There have been illustrators taking legal action against AI companies and I'm seriously considering it. I just want them to stop." The south London-based artist did not name a company his legal team would consider pursuing.
AI firms have previously argued that using copyrighted material to train their models does not necessarily constitute copyright infringement. 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. 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." OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is already being sued by German publishing group Penguin Random House, together with author and illustrator Ingo Siegner. The allegation is that OpenAI copied the children's book character The Little Dragon Coconut (Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss) Whether the AI company has breached copyright law will be decided by the Munich Regional Court in spring 2027.
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