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FEP Statement on the COREPER adoption of the AI Act
Europe may once again set the world standard following the adoption of the AI Act in COREPER
The Federation of European Publishers (FEP) welcomes the vote in favour of the agreement found on the EU Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act that took place today at the COREPER. By this vote, Member States opened the way to the adoption of the world’s first concrete regulation of AI, to ensure the ethical and human-centric development of this technology and prevent abusive or illegal practices.
The AI Act introduces basic obligations in the field of copyright, recalling that general purpose AI (such as generative AI) must respect copyright law and have policies in place to this effect. It will also ensure that these AI are transparent on the data used for their training.
This transparency obligation is essential to allow publishers to enforce their rights and ensure that their works have not been used illegally for the training of an AI. It will complement existing copyright obligations, that notably allow rightsholders to opt-out their works from Text-and-Data mining uses and support the development of a licensing eco-system.
Over the past few years, AI has developed at a rapid pace using copyright-protected works illegally and without any remuneration for rightsholders and with little to no transparency. The deployment of generative AI has already destabilised the market, flooding it with AI content and often without informing consumers of the origin of the content.
Ricardo Franco Levi, President of FEP, declared “In a context where, both in the EU and internationally, the abuses of AI are more and more documented and contested, the EU has once again the opportunity to set a world standard in digital regulation, and allow AI to unleash its potential without infringing the rights of others”.
For more information contact:
Quentin Deschandelliers, FEP Legal Advisor
qdeschandelliers(a)fep-fee.eu
+32 2 776 84 63
FEP is an independent, non-commercial umbrella association of book publishers’ associations in the European Union. FEP represents 29 national associations of publishers of books, learned journals and educational materials of the European Union, the European Economic Area and other European countries. Thus, FEP is the voice of the great majority of publishers in Europe.
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