4 days ago
As the AI Act falls short on protecting copyright, creatives eye licensing reform
Copyright holders are turning their attention towards a potential licensing framework, after being left disappointed by the AI Act's transparency obligations and Code of Practice for general-purpose AIs (GPAIs).
The Commission released Thursday much-anticipated template for AI developers to summarise the data used to train their models. However, the measure has been met with scepticism from creators, who believe that transparency alone is not enough to safeguard their copyrights.
By nature, GPAI models – the technology that underpins the likes of ChatGPT, Le Chat, or Midjourney – require vast amounts of data to produce outputs that are more accurate and less likely to be biased.
But the provenance of the data is often opaque, and creatives and artists worry that they have no way of knowing whether their work was used to train AI systems – and therefore no way to object to its use. Transparency as a first step The EU's landmark Artificial Intelligence Act is intended to bring greater transparency to AI systems and enable creators to assert their copyright claims.
The law requires developers of GPAI models to produce summaries of the data used for training, and to implement systems allowing right holders to "opt out" of having their content used for model development.
On Thursday, the Commission published the template it expects AI developers to use for these summaries of training data. This aspect of the AI Act faced intense lobbying by copyright holders, who wanted the templates to be as granular as possible, and AI companies, who worried too much detail could reveal trade secrets.
But industry is not convinced by the Commission's implementation. "It falls short of safeguarding the creative sector and, if not corrected, risks undermining Europe's AI Act and copyright framework in favour of a few global tech companies," Burak Özgen, deputy general manager of GESAC, the authors and composers' lobby, told Euractiv.
A Code of Practice for GPAIs was also negotiated between experts, lobbyists and civil society over several months to further flesh out compliance around key issues such as copyright. But for rights holders, the final text also fell short.
The improvements in the final version of the Code are " certainly insufficient", said Özgen, arguing that it lacks "concrete" detail which would make it "actionable". His blunt summary is that the Code does "nothing useful to help exercising and enforcing the rights of authors". Copyright rules fit for GenAI At the core of the disagreement between right holders and AI developers is how copyright rules apply to generative AI tools – and what should come next.
The EU's Copyright Directive allows the use of software that crawls the internet, on lawfully accessed websites and databases, to collect copyrighted text and images for data analytics or research – aka text and data mining (TDM) – unless copyright holders have actively opted out of having their work scraped.
For the tech lobby CCIA, the TDM exception is essential to support AI innovation. The rules were " carefully designed to strike a vital balance between fostering innovation and protecting intellectual property," CCIA Europe's Senior Policy Manager, Boniface de Champris, told Euractiv.
However, a study ordered by the Parliament's legal affairs committee takes a very different view, finding that the TDM rules were not intended for generative AI – and "do not provide legal certainty, transparency, or effective rights control", as the report puts it.
The two camps remain divided over this issue, which may be why right holders are now turning their attention towards a potential dedicated framework for licensing agreements. Finding a way to be appropriately compensated for use of their works to train AI remains a central concern for them, especially as GenAI uptake accelerates.
A draft Parliament report led by MEP Axel Voss – who also negotiated the EU's existing Copyright Directive – makes the case for a new framework to enable licensing deals to be concluded. The report must still be amended by other MEPs before it can represent the Parliament's official position.
But the composer and songwriters lobby ECSA was happy that Voss' draft report " rejects the application of the TDM exceptions to Generative AI, and calls to ensure fair remuneration," as Helienne Lindvall, its president, told Euractiv.
The ball is now in the Commission's court. It must decide whether to respond to the rise of GenAI by revising the EU's copyright framework – with the Copyright Directive up for review in 2026 – and, if so, figure out how to ensure that any new rules strike the right balance between support for AI innovation and protecting human creativity.
(nl, aw)
