Creative sector urges EU to put transparency back in AI Act

Europe’s creative sector wants EU officials to restore transparency to the EU AI Act. The EU AI Act is a comprehensive AI law that intends to regulate its use in order to improve the conditions for its development and application. The EU legislation puts a premium on AI systems’ safety, transparency, traceability, non-discrimination, and environmental friendliness.

Various groups, including policymakers, the creative community, and creator groups, have called on EU institutions to put ‘transparency back at the heart of the AI Act‘. Creative organisations representing ‘hundreds of thousands of writers, translators, performers, composers, songwriters, screen directors, screenwriters, visual artists, journalists, and other creative workers’ are urging European institutions to ‘reach an agreement on a balanced regulation that not only fosters the development of AI technology and related businesses but also guarantees a human-centric approach to creation that protects the rights and livelihoods of the authors and artists.’

Why does it matter?

The European Parliament’s top objective is to guarantee that AI systems used in the EU are safe, transparent, and supervised by humans to avoid any harm. Transparency requirements are thought to empower content creators by allowing them to assess if copyrighted material used as AI training data was obtained lawfully and fairly. The call for transparency comes amid concerns that Europe’s proposed AI legislation would be toned down during the last stages of the process.

The act is presently in the ‘trilogue phase,’ in which the European Commission, European Parliament, and EU Council are all trying to reach an agreement on the final text of the legislation. Intense negotiations are ongoing between the EU institutions, with the Spanish Presidency trying to find a compromise between proposals by France, Germany, and Italy and counter-proposals from leading MEPs.