Today while I was at a web conference, a speaker used an incredible MIT Media Lab project as a demo during a talk. Check out the I/O brush project. The project appears to be a camera that can take a photo still or video of anything you point it at, then the captured images can be “painted” on a virtual canvas. It’s essentially one giant derivative work creator.

Watch this Real Video demo of the I/O Brush in action

After you see it, you can see how incredible this technology is. I can’t imagine when something like this would be a cheap, easily available tool, but I can imagine that parts of the technology may eventually show up in something. It takes the concept of rip, mix, and burn to whole new levels, creating new art works from anything else (including copyrighted art, text, and trademarked logos) and I wonder what the legal landscape will be like when this technology is readily available. Can you imagine the scorn this product will get from publishing companies, movie studios, and the like?