TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Ethics & Provenance · AGE 17—20 · FACTUAL · DURABLE
Legal, contractual, institutional, ethical
A yes from one of the four systems says nothing about the other three.
The idea
"Am I allowed to use this?" is at least four questions. Legal: what the law of your country permits: copyright, data protection. Contractual: what you have signed: the model's terms, the client's agreement, an NDA. Institutional: what your school, competition, publisher or employer's rules say. Ethical: what you can defend to the person affected: the photographer, the community, the client. A licence may allow what a competition forbids; a competition may allow what a contract prohibits; all three may allow what your conscience questions. Check all four, separately; notice which said no, and when a fifth applies.
Why it matters
Most mistakes here come from answering one question and believing you have answered all four. "The tool's terms allow commercial use" may be true, and it says nothing about your client's NDA.
See it in the studio
You train a small style model on a living photographer's published images of Chandigarh to make moodboards. The model's terms permit it. The competition brief says nothing. The client's contract says all material must be original or licensed. The photographer, if asked, would say no. Four answers: yes, silent, no, no. Which one governs what you do?
Watch for this
Treating "legal" as settled. Whether training a model on copyrighted images infringes is being argued in courts in several countries, the answers differ by place, and in India the only ruling so far — the Delhi High Court's interim order of 24 July 2026 in ANI v OpenAI — concerned text, decided nothing finally, and left the suit running. "It is legal" and "it is illegal" are both overclaims. "It is unresolved here, and here is what I know" is the honest sentence.
Try it
Pick one AI-assisted image you have made. Write four lines under it: the law that applies (and whether it is settled), the terms you agreed to, your institution's rule, and the person who could object. Mark each yes, no or unknown. Count the unknowns honestly. Then write a fifth line if the project had one — a security rule, a professional regulation, an office policy.
Prove it
Take one real studio situation and separate its permissions, naming the system each belongs to, which one would stop the work, and whether a fifth system applied.
How it works
The four systems differ in who enforces them and what happens when you break them. Law is enforced by courts, and for AI it is being written now: data-protection statutes exist — the EU's GDPR since 2016; India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, with the DPDP Rules, 2025, coming into force in phases — while copyright questions about training and outputs are before courts and copyright offices in several countries. Contracts are enforced by the other party. Institutions enforce through grades, disqualification or dismissal. Ethics is enforced by nobody in particular and by everyone: your reputation, and the person you would have to look in the face. The law card on this strand, What the law says today, follows the first of the four as it changes.
What this idea builds on
What this idea opens up
Sources
Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.