Oct 30, 2024 2 min read

Music industry warns of AI “malpractices” on an industrial scale, says EU AI Act must “be made meaningful” to safeguard creatives

The EU AI Act was welcomed by the music industry earlier this year because of what it says about copyright and transparency. But how useful the act is will depend on how it is implemented. To that end, the music industry has called on EU lawmakers to ensure the new rules are “made meaningful”

Music industry warns of AI “malpractices” on an industrial scale, says EU AI Act must “be made meaningful” to safeguard creatives

The music industry has told European Union lawmakers that the copyright and transparency elements of the EU AI Act “must be made meaningful” as they are implemented across Europe. Doing so is “essential for safeguarding the value of Europe’s world-renowned creative content in a global marketplace” and will also ensure that “AI services generate outputs based on high-quality, diverse and trustworthy inputs”. 

The AI Act was welcomed by the music industry when it was passed earlier this year, though - at the time - the sector’s trade organisations stressed that it was important that the new regulations were “put into practice in a meaningful and effective way”. That point is reiterated in a new letter signed by various music industry organisations, as well as trade bodies from across the wider creative industries. 

It says that those industries are currently “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”. This, it adds, results in “illegal commercial gains and unfair competitive advantages for their AI models, services and products, in violation of European copyright laws”.

The AI Act went into force in August and is now in an implementation phase. This, the letter says, “provides a crucial opportunity to address such malpractices and ensure accountability in the AI industry”. 

Doing so should create a “healthy and sustainable licensing market” where AI companies secure licences granting them permission to use content in their training, remunerating creators and rightsholders. Assuming, of course, that the new regulations are implemented properly. 

The creative industries are adamant that AI companies must get permission before using any copyright protected works to train their generative AI models. But many AI companies argue that they can rely on the text and data mining exceptions found in some copyright systems (or the ‘fair use’ principle in the US) to make use of copyright protected works without getting permission. 

EU copyright law includes a text and data mining exception. However, copyright owners can opt out of that exception, by ‘reserving their rights’. When that happens permission is required to use that individual or company’s content. Many music companies have reserved their rights in this way, with music publisher trade body ICMP launching a portal in April to help with that process. 

The AI Act says that AI companies must “put in place a policy to comply with EU law on copyright”, which needs to specifically identify how it is complying with the “reservation of rights”. 

The creative industries also want AI companies to be transparent about what content has been used in their training processes. On that, the AI Act says companies must “draw up and make publicly available a sufficiently detailed summary about the content used for training of the general-purpose AI model”. 

As the new regulations are implemented those rules on copyright and transparency “must be made meaningful”, the new letter states, before adding, “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”. 

Addressing the EU Parliament, Commission and Council, the letter concludes, “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”. 

Music industry organisations signing the new letter include AEPO-ARTIS, ECSA, GESAC, IAO, ICMP, IFPI, IMPALA and IMPF.

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