On Copyright and generative artificial intelligence – opportunities and challenges

(2025/2058(INI))

The European Parliament,

–having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, in particular Articles 4, 16, 26, 114 and 118 thereof,

–having regard to Article 17(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union,

–having regard to Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 (Resolution 217 A), which affirms both the right to freely participate in the cultural life and the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary, or artistic production,

–having regard to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works,

–having regard to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of 15 April 1994,

–having regard to Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases (Database Directive),

–having regard to Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (InfoSoc Directive),

–having regard to Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights,

–having regard to Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ETS No. 009), which guarantees the right to the peaceful enjoyment of possessions and has been interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights as encompassing intellectual property rights, including in Anheuser-Busch Inc. v. Portugal (11 January 2007),

–having regard to Directive 2009/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the legal protection of computer programs,

–having regard to Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC,

–having regard to Directive (EU) 2016/943 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2016 on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information (trade secrets) against their unlawful acquisition, use and disclosure,

–having regard to Regulation (EU) 2018/1807 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 November 2018 on a framework for the free flow of non-personal data in the European Union,

–having regard to Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC (CDSM Directive),

–having regard to Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on open data and the re-use of public sector information,

–having regard to Regulation (EU) 2019/1150 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on promoting fairness and transparency for business users of online intermediation services,

–having regard to the Commission White Paper of 19 February 2020 on Artificial Intelligence - A European approach to excellence and trust (COM(2020)0065),

–having regard to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Copyright Treaty and the Revised Issues Paper on Intellectual Property Policy and Artificial Intelligence (WIPO/IP/AI/2/GE/20/1 REV) of 29 May 2020,

–having regard to the Parliament resolution on Intellectual property rights for the development of artificial intelligence technologies of 20 October 2020,

–having regard to Regulation (EU) 2022/868 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2022 on European data governance (DGA),

–having regard to Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2023 on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data (Data act),

–having regard to Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (AI Act),

–having regard to Rule 55 of its Rules of Procedure,

–having regard to the report of the Committee on Legal Affairs (XXXX/2025),

Context

A whereas the right to property, including intellectual property, is enshrined as a fundamental right in Article 17 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union;

B.whereas the European Union faces the strategic challenge of lagging behind international developments in the field of artificial intelligence; whereas it is therefore essential to promote, rather than impede, the advancement of AI technologies within the Union in order to safeguard Europe’s technological sovereignty, competitiveness, and capacity for innovation;

C.whereas copyright and related rights come into effect automatically and confer extensive exclusive rights, including those to reproduce works and other subject matter and adapt, distribute and communicate them to the public;

D.whereas generative AI (GenAI) is a type of artificial intelligence that, unlike traditional AI systems that only classify or predict, creates content, such as text, images, music, videos and code, often mimicking human creativity, thereby relying on pre-existing content, including copyright-protected materials;

E.whereas the development, the deployment and the use of artificial intelligence must be fully compliant with the existing legal framework; whereas it is unacceptable that such technological advancements disregard established rights, in particular those enshrined in copyright law;

F.whereas the key legal questions about the interplay between GenAI and copyright and related rights include whether the new kind of use of copyrighted works and other subject matter in training datasets is lawful under EU law and what the status of AI-generated content should be;

G.whereas the reference to the CDSM Directive in the AI Act is inadequate and fails to provide an appropriate and proportionate solution; whereas copyright and related rights, as fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union, are not overridden by the AI Act;

H.whereas fair remuneration for the use of protected content is the backbone of the creative industry in Europe; whereas the use of content protected by copyright and related rights as training data for generative AI models, without remuneration to rights holders, creates a systemic imbalance in the copyright ecosystem to their detriment, thereby undermining the economic sustainability of the creative sector in the European Union, particularly given that, at present, rights holders cannot easily or effectively exercise their right to opt out from the exception provided for in Article 4 of the CDSM Directive, nor verify whether their opt-out has been respected;

I.whereas ensuring proper enforcement of the law and a level playing field across the Union requires that European rules on copyright and related rights apply uniformly to all AI providers deploying products or offering services within the European Union, irrespective of their place of establishment and of where any use of protected content took place prior to such deployment or offer;

GenAI training

J.whereas Article 4 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive) introduced an exception for the reproduction and the extraction of works and other subject matter for the purpose of text and data mining (TDM), which, under Article 2 of that Directive, is defined as ‘any automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form in order to generate information [...]’; whereas Article 4 was neither drafted nor intended to regulate the specific practices involved in AI training;

K.whereas this new and specific form of use (GenAI training) requires a clarification of the legal conditions under which such training may be conducted;

L.whereas high-quality and comprehensive training datasets are essential for the effective development of GenAI systems and to secure high-quality and trustworthy outputs of GenAI systems; whereas enabling the lawful use of such datasets within the European Union is therefore crucial to fostering innovation, ensuring technological sovereignty, and maintaining the Union’s competitiveness in the rapidly evolving global AI landscape;

M.whereas the upcoming launch of the EUIPO Copyright Knowledge Centre would represent a timely and commendable initiative aimed at strengthening the interface between copyright and emerging technologies, particularly GenAI;

N.whereas, in addition to a standardised machine-readable opt-out, rights holders should also have the possibility to register such opt-out in a centralised registry, using a single technological standard and in machine-readable format, potentially managed by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), thereby enabling the effective exclusion of registered works from automated data crawling;

O.whereas any GenAI provider should ensure full and detailed transparency concerning all copyright-protected content used to train that system, irrespective of the jurisdiction in which the copyright-relevant acts underlying the training were performed; whereas this transparency shall consist in an itemised list identifying each copyright-protected content used for training; whereas the same requirement should apply mutatis mutandis to any subsequent use of content for inference, retrieval-augmented generation or fine-tuning not only by providers of AI models, as currently stipulated by Article 53 AIA, but also by providers or deployers of AI systems;

P.whereas such transparency could be facilitated through a trusted intermediary, such as the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), which would be responsible for notifying rights holders of the use of their content, thereby enabling them to assert claims in relation to its use for training; such an intermediary should be endowed with the necessary powers and resources to assess whether providers and deployers comply fully with the transparency obligations;

Q.whereas, as an alternative to the aforementioned EUIPO register, transparency could also be achieved by enabling rights holders to watermark their works and other protected subject matter, and by requiring AI providers to make available search tools that allow for the detection of such watermarks among the materials used for training;

R.whereas, in addition to the obligation of full transparency concerning copyright-protected works and other protected subject matter, there is a need to establish a mechanism whereby, under certain conditions, the failure by AI providers or deployers to provide complete transparency shall give rise to an irrebuttable presumption that any relevant copyrighted work or other protected subject matter has been used for training purposes, thereby triggering all applicable legal consequences under Union and national law for the infringement of copyright or related rights; whereas, where a court finds in favour of a rights holder on the basis of either such a presumption or of submitted evidence, all reasonable and proportionate legal costs and other expenses shall be borne by the AI provider;

S.whereas there is a knowledge gap among GenAI providers, especially smaller firms, regarding their copyright obligations under EU law;

T.whereas the press sector holds a vital role in safeguarding democracy and the democratic structure within the European Union; whereas it is essential to ensure that GenAI models and systems do not engage in selective processing that favours certain publications over others, thereby preserving the plurality and impartiality of information; whereas GenAI models and systems must be designed to incorporate and consider the full spectrum of press publications to uphold fundamental democratic values of diversity and fairness in public discourse; whereas there is a need to establish clear quality standards for GenAI models and systems;

GenAI output

U.whereas transparency regarding the output generated by artificial intelligence systems is essential to enable proper classification of works as ‘human-created’ or otherwise; whereas such classification entails significant legal consequences, including for the applicability of copyright protection and the determination of rights and liabilities;

V.whereas the generation of outputs, characteristic of GenAI, can infringe the rights of reproduction, of making available to the public, or of communication to the public; whereas the TDM exception as provided for in article 4 of the CSDSM does not cover the right of making available to the public or the right of communication to the public;

X.whereas, when it comes to the legal treatment of GenAI outputs, EU copyright law remains grounded in the principles of human authorship; whereas according to the settled case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the concept of a ‘work’ entails two cumulative conditions: first, it must be an original subject matter that reflects the author’s own intellectual creation; second, that creation must be expressed in a manner that makes it identifiable with sufficient precision and objectivity;

Y.whereas inconsistent international regulation regarding the copyright eligibility of AI-generated content poses a risk to the global coherence of intellectual property law and may give rise to regulatory arbitrage or undermine the competitiveness of the Union’s creative and AI sectors; whereas international convergence and the establishment of a global regulatory framework would provide a more effective and coherent alternative to the current fragmentation of legal approaches;

Z.whereas, to the extent permitted by international law, the existing principle of territoriality needs to be adapted for the training of GenAI systems in order to ensure that training with European content is subject to European law even if it is realised outside the EU;

1.Recommends that the Commission, independently of its planned review of the copyright framework and the CDSM Directive and without presupposing the need for legislative revision, urgently conduct a thorough assessment of whether the existing EU copyright acquis adequately addresses the legal uncertainty and competitive effects associated with the use of protected works and other subject matter for the training of generative AI systems, as well as the dissemination of AI-generated content that may substitute human-created expression;

2.Further recommends that such assessment aims to uphold a framework in which fair remuneration mechanisms enable the generation of the resources needed for European artistic and creative production to thrive in the context of AI-driven global transformation;

3.Notes the use of generative AI systems that rely on protected content without authorisation from, or compensation to, the rights holders affected by such use, particularly when integrated into search engines or other digital services that enable the generation, often in real time and at marginal cost, of content that imitates or directly draws upon original works and other protected subject matter on which the models were trained or that was scraped, including in real time, by such models; is alarmed that these practices may result in the provision of products and services that directly compete with those of the rights holders;

4.Calls on the Commission to immediately impose a remuneration obligation on providers of general-purpose AI models and systems in respect of the novel use of content protected by copyright or related rights, with such obligation applying until the reforms envisaged in this report are enacted;

5.Encourages the Commission to coordinate efforts on raising awareness on copyright among AI developers, which may include compliance checklists, legal and technological toolkits, and technical guides;

6.Supports the clarification of the TDM exception under Article 4 CDSM as regards the main flaws and ambiguities detected thus far in its application, especially as concerns the establishment of a clear machine-readable standard for the opt-out and the concept of ‘lawful access’;

7.Believes that a legal framework for GenAI should be established either through the introduction of a dedicated exception to the exclusive rights to reproduction and extraction, distinct from that provided for TDM under Article 4 of the CDSM Directive, or by expanding the scope of that provision to explicitly encompass the training of GenAI, which is currently not covered; stresses that rights holders shall have the right to opt out through a standardised, machine-readable mechanism;

8.Recommends that the Commission ensures the compatibility of this new GenAI legal framework with the three-step test of Article 5(5) InfoSoc Directive;

9.Recommends assigning the EUIPO responsibility for setting up and managing a central register of opt-outs and, where necessary, for mediating the licensing process, so as to streamline relations between GenAI providers and rights holders, establishing a workable, innovation-friendly framework that supports the Union’s competitiveness without unduly hindering the development of AI technologies; further recommends that both opt-out declarations and licence offers be recorded in machine-readable form in the same register;

10.Calls on the Commission to propose the full, actionable transparency and source documentation by providers and deployers of general-purpose AI models and systems, with regard to the use of any copyright-protected work or other protected subject matter for any purpose, including for inferencing, retrieval-augmented generation, or fine-tuning, taking into due account the need to protect trade secrets and confidential business information;

11.Calls on the Commission to propose the establishment of an irrebuttable presumption that, for any general-purpose AI (GenAI) model or system placed on the Union market, works and other subject matter protected by copyright or related rights have been used for its training where the statutory transparency obligations set out in this resolution have not been fully complied with; further recommends that, where a rights holder succeeds in legal proceedings either on the basis of this presumption or through submitted evidence, any reasonable and proportionate legal costs and other expenses incurred in enforcing such rights shall be borne by the provider of the AI model or system;

12.Insists that AI-generated content should remain ineligible for copyright protection, and that the public domain status of such works be clearly determined;

13.Calls on the Commission to explore measures to counter the infringement of the rights of reproduction, of making available to the public and of communication to the public through the production of GenAI outputs;

14.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, and the governments and parliaments of the Member States.