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Numerous European music organisations among new backers of Human Artistry Campaign

By | Published on Tuesday 11 April 2023

The Human Artistry Campaign – which launched at South By Southwest last month, putting the spotlight on issues around generative AI – has announced another stack of organisations that are now backing the initiative.

The campaign follows the recent spike in interest in creative or generative AI technologies – ie AI tools that can generate original content by crunching a load of data linked to existing content – which was in turn caused by the hype around certain generative AI platforms, not least ChatGPT.

With those technologies getting ever more sophisticated, long-standing questions around the licensing of data mining, the copyright status of AI-generated works and how transparent people and companies should be when such technologies are employed are becoming more urgent.

The Human Artistry Campaign – led by a consortium of US music industry groups, though also involving organisations that go beyond music and the US – has been set up to lobby on all those issues on behalf of creators and copyright owners.

It launched with seven core principles, which acknowledge the positive impact generative AI technologies will have, but also set out the concerns around copyright and transparency, and the potential negative impact the rapid evolution of those AI tools could have on creators and the creative industries.

Newly signed up to back the campaign are organisations representing music-makers and/or music copyright owners in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.

Plus global organisations like the Independent Music Publishers International Forum, the International Confederation Of Music Publishers and the Worldwide Independent Network, as well as pan-European indie labels trade group IMPALA, and organisations repping photographers, voice actors, writers, journalists, literary agents and book publishers.

Confirming the new members, a spokesperson for the campaign says: “Almost daily since we launched, new groups have reached out to join the cause. It’s a testament to the unifying power of the Human Artistry Campaign’s seven core principles and the broader creative community’s intense focus on this issue”.

“While creators in the past have waited out emerging technologies hoping they would be used in responsible ways, the Human Artistry Campaign is moving aggressively to join the AI debate at the front end”, an official statement from the campaign adds.

“Creators aren’t waiting to be invited to the table this time”, its spokesperson then confirms. “We are claiming our seat and speaking up now, while there is time to work together with tech to ensure AI is trained and deployed in ways that follow all relevant laws and respect creators’ and performers’ rights”.



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