Comic books and legality of things

[Relvo]

Greetings!

In the age of Generative AI, it's not necessary anymore to have amazing drawing skills to produce digital art. They are still invaluable, it's just that art has become a bit more accessible to the masses.

That said, I am considering to make a Star Wars fanfic comic book. It would tell stories of my SWTOR player characters (I got really attached to them!). Think of it as an evolved form of self-roleplay in some ways. Of course, I do not intend to monetize it in any way, as that would be IP infringement.

I used to believe that as long as one does not receive any commericial benefits when using assets from active and protected IP's, all should be fine basically. We do have after all various Star Wars fanfictions, from fan movies to even games. I am aware of the KOTOR Apeiron case, though a quick research told me the authors did intend to monetize their project.

Recently, I've came across this video, which basically boils down to a discussion with an IP lawyer on this very matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_CAcn0bf8A

This channel is focused on writing, publishing and marketing books, so perhaps the context is a little bit different here, though when talking about the matter, they did not mention books in particular. I would be interested in every of your input folks, since while I could "talk to my lawyer", depending on the one I talk to I might get different opinions on the matter.

So what do you think?

Edited May 24 by Relvo

[JenaSalton]

I disagree with the lawyer in the video. Writing fanfiction is perfectly legal. Sites like AO3, fanfiction.net, and others wouldn't exist if it was illegal. Profiting from it is illegal, trying to sell it on sites like Amazon as a free ebook is probably illegal or at least discouraged, claiming it is an official continuation of the source material or that the author/producer has endorsed it would be a big no-no, but actually writing it? Thats fine.

As for the AI part, I'm not aware of any laws against it, but I think there should be when so much of AI is based off the works of real people who have received no compensation for their work nor were they asked if they agreed to have their art used to train AI. And I know for myself and many other people, the use of AI to create some type of fan art, fan fic, other type of content would mean that is not content that I would look at, read, or share.

So if this is something you want to do, just for yourself, I don't think anything is stopping you. If it's something you want to share for other people to enjoy, I'd very highly recommend not using AI.