Have you had your art stolen? Welcome to the club! I’ve had my work ‘stolen’ (that is to say: my copyright breached) numerous times. I had my work printed on clothing, phone cases, book covers, and more – all without my permission. The standard course of action is to file a DMCA takedown form. If that doesn’t work, a cease-and-desist letter from a lawyer usually does the trick. This is what I recommend doing if your copyright has been breached. There’s unfortunately no way to fully prevent your art being used without your permission, except for one thing: Never showing your art to anyone. That means your work will never gain any kind of positive exposure, so I don’t recommend that! There’s also positive benefits to showing your work, so try to weigh the negatives against the positives when things like this happen.
More recently, my work has been uploaded to databases to be used for generative AI under the guise of “fair use.” Although some see this as a legal gray area, I think it’s a blatant breach of my copyright. To learn more about my opinions on generative AI, check out this post.