On Wednesday, Legal Affairs Committee MEPs adopted a series of proposals to ensure full transparency and fair remuneration of rightsholders for the use of copyrighted work by generative artificial intelligence (genAI), by 17 votes in favour, 3 against, and with 2 abstentions.

Remuneration for use of protected work

MEPs want EU copyright law to apply to all generative AI systems available on the EU market, regardless where the training takes place. Since genAI relies on and reproduces protected content, MEPs want full transparency about its use, including a list of each copyrighted work used and detailed records of crawling activities by AI providers and deployers. Failure to comply with transparency requirements could be tantamount to infringement of copyright, for which AI providers could bear legal consequences.

MEPs also demand fair remuneration for the use of copyrighted content by AI to ensure that the EU’s creative and cultural sector can thrive in the AI age. They call on…