Open letter: Creators and rightholders organisations call for a meaningful implementation of the AI Act

We are writing to you as a broad coalition of creators and rightholders active across the EU’s cultural and creative industries to reiterate our support for the aims of the AI Act and to encourage you to promote and oversee its effective and meaningful implementation.

Addressed to the European Parliament, the Commission and Member States:

The AI Act is a pioneering model of ethical and responsible AI regulation that sets the basis for best practice at global level. If implemented and applied effectively it will foster an environment in the EU where AI innovation can develop in an ethical and accountable way alongside flourishing cultural and creative industries across the EU.

As cultural and creative industries, we are both essential and a prerequisite for cultural diversity and freedom of expression in the European Union. We invest in and embrace cutting-edge technologies (including for many years now Artificial Intelligence systems and products), we drive significant economic growth in Europe and bolster Europe’s global competitiveness.

However, we are contending with the seriously detrimental situation of generative AI companies taking our content without authorisation on an industrial scale in order to develop their AI models. Their actions result in illegal commercial gains and unfair competitive advantages for their AI models, services, and products, in violation of European copyright laws.

The implementation and application of the EU’s new AI Act provides a crucial opportunity to address such malpractices and ensure accountability in the AI industry. It should aim at achieving a healthy and sustainable licensing market that encourages responsible AI innovation and complies with core principles of fair market competition and remuneration for creators and rightholders, while effectively preventing unauthorised uses of their works.

To achieve this, the rules provided in the AI Act – from the obligation for general purpose AI model providers to make publicly available a sufficiently detailed summary of the content used for training of their models to the obligation for such providers to demonstrate that they have put in place policies to respect EU copyright law – must be made meaningful. As is made clear under the AI Act, these measures should enable creators and rightholders to exercise and enforce their rights when it comes to ingesting and copying copyright-protected works for training by AI models.

This is not only essential for safeguarding the value of Europe’s world-renowned creative content in a global marketplace, but also for ensuring that AI services generate outputs based on high-quality, diverse, and trustworthy inputs.

We support the standards you have set in the AI Act that should enable the cultural and creative industries to evolve and thrive. We now ask for your continued support in translating them into concrete steps in the forthcoming implementation phase to ensure a fair and equitable framework, where AI innovation in the EU also safeguards and strengthens cultural and creative industries.

Download the letter below.

Signatories:

  • AEPO-ARTIS - the Association of European Performers' Organisations
  • CEPI - The European Audiovisual Production Association
  • CEPI - The Center of the Picture Industry
  • ECSA - European Composer and Songwriter Alliance
  • EFJ - The European Federation of Journalists
  • EMMA - The European Magazine Media Association
  • ENPA - The European Newspaper Publishers’ Association
  • EPC - The European Publishers Council
  • EUROCINEMA - Association of Film and Television Producers
  • EVA - European Visual Artists
  • FEP - The Federation of European Publishers
  • FERA - Federation of European Screen Directors
  • FIAPF - The International Federation of Film Producers’ Associations
  • GESAC - The European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers
  • IAO - The International Artist Organisation
  • ICMP - The International Confederation of Music Publishers
  • IFPI - The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
  • IFRRO - International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations
  • IMPALA - The European association of independent music companies
  • IMPF - Independent Music Publishers International Forum
  • IVF - International Video Federation
  • NME - News Media Europe
  • SAA - The Society of Audiovisual Authors
  • STM - The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers
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