The European Parliament has adopted a series of recommendations aimed at protecting the creative sector from the unauthorized use of copyrighted material by generative artificial intelligence. In a vote of 460 to 71, MEPs asserted that EU copyright law must apply to all genAI systems on the EU market, regardless of where the models were originally trained. The Parliament insists that AI providers and deployers provide full transparency, including itemized lists of all copyrighted works used for training and detailed records of crawling activities. Failure to provide this data could be deemed copyright infringement, potentially forcing AI companies to bear all legal costs and related expenses if a court rules in favor of a rightsholder.
To support the creative industry which generates 6.9% of the EU’s gross domestic product, the recommendations call for fair remuneration for creators. The Parliament emphasized that content fully generated by AI should not receive copyright protection.
Special protections were also highlighted for the news media sector, with MEPs urging the Commission to ensure outlets are compensated when AI systems divert their traffic or revenue. The proposal grants news organizations the right to refuse the use of their content for training and warns against “gatekeepers” using AI to self-preference their own services at the expense of media pluralism.
